


Nature of the Beast

by jasminepeony14



Series: The Divine Keys [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 92,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasminepeony14/pseuds/jasminepeony14
Summary: After his turning, Simon Lewis tried to undo what never should have done but fails, the light of day doing no damage.  Leilani Everhart, a beautiful and  mysterious girl, happens upon him in the fresh aftermath of this failure and invites him back to O'Keefe Place, a boarding house for similarly unique Downworlders looking to escape a painful past.  He settles into his new life and new friends and hopes to forget the old ones.  But then, one autumn night, his past and present collide in an alleyway, and Simon finds he can't hide from himself any more.  Meanwhile, the mystery of who and what Leilani really is deepens, and the threat of trappers looms ever closer.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Jace Wayland, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: The Divine Keys [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664917
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	1. Part I, Chapter 1: The Light of Day

Part One: The Soullessness of Men

From the beasts we scorn as soulless, in the forest, field and den, the cry  
goes up to witness the Soullessness of Men. –M. Frida Hartley

I. The Light of Day

When Simon had first met her, Leilani found him stunned and sun-soaked. He had been standing riverside, the cold, gray water sloshing against the bank with sloth speed, as he stared down the ascending sunrise that had so cruelly failed to stake him. Leilani appeared like a wingless angel, backlit by the dreamy, goldish pink of dawn, and her almond honey amber eyes shined as brilliantly as precious gems, glittering with easy empathy. For a moment, Simon thought she really was an angel, a seraph of mercy come to ferry him to the Other Side. Before her, the saccharine taste of angel blood still wet on his fangs, he felt debilitatingly ashamed.  
She drew closer, and her beauty became more defined but no less otherworldly. Her skin was a light butterscotch cream, almost aureate against the orchid purple cotton of her maxi dress, and long tendrils of midnight black curls fell past the slim curves of her hips. Soft fingertips grazed the back of his hand, as a round face with elegant cheekbones, a petite nose, and full raspberry lips emerged out of the glare of the sun. Her amber eyes were a sublime ochre topaz up close.  
“Is this your first morning?” she asked, her voice melodious and soft like spring leaves rustling in a May breeze. “As a Daylighter?” Her perspicacious gaze only heightened the wonderment of her golden loveliness, and Simon wasn’t entirely convinced she was real. Maybe the sun had smited him after all, and this ethereal girl was his last dream—an imaginary boon of light before darkness consumed him whole. She leaned a little closer, and the scent of something heady and floral hurled into his nostrils, jolting him out of his warm reverie and back to reality, chilly with salty river wind.  
She’s real, Simon decided, and not an angel. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t there to save him. To pull him from the muck of the river bank and lead him back to solid ground.

She might be fey, Simon thought as he followed a half-step behind. She was certainly more than beautiful enough to be one. But yet, Simon had met a handful of fey at Hunter’s Moon, and they all had possessed the same undercurrent of predatory mischief that prickled goosebumps into his skin. And they had a way of speaking that twisted truth into a matter of technicalities and painted lies between the lines. This girl had a gentle forthrightness and a smile too kind to be feigned.  
“I’m Leilani,” she said over her shoulder. “Leilani Everhart. May I ask what you are called?”  
“What I’m called?” Simon repeated. “Huh?”  
“Your name,” Leilani clarified with a light chuckle. She adjusted the strap of a cloth satchel so that it sat in the valley between the mounds of her breasts. “I can’t very well call you ‘Daylighter,’ unless, of course, you prefer that.” Simon blinked. Ever since he had Turned, people had seemed to have forgotten he had a name at all. “Vampire” and “Bloodsucker” had suddenly overtaken the spaces in conversation where his name should’ve been. It was jarring to have someone more interested in who he was instead of what.  
“Simon,” he answered. “I’m Simon.”  
“It’s nice to meet you, Simon,” Leilani greeted pleasantly. She moved with a natural elegance, gliding across the gritty sand like a swan on the mirror veneer of a lake, and her footprints were just faint impressions—mere stencils of presence. Of weight. A jolt of envious wonderment shot through Simon’s veins, as his sneakers sank into the unstable soil. What does that feel like, he pondered, to walk over sludge unperturbed?  
“…Simon?” He blinked wildly at Leilani’s beckoning and refocused. She had stopped by a large, raised flat rock that jutted out into the water like a runaway stage.  
“Sorry?” he squeaked. If blood could circulate in his veins, his cheeks would’ve surely burned a bright salmon. Leilani’s lips smoothed into a tender, patient smile.  
“Do you have any breakfast plans, Simon?” she iterated.  
“Ah, no,” he hedged. “I, uh, was thinking about skipping breakfast this morning.” And pretty much every morning for the rest of eternity he thought broodingly. But oblivion had eluded him, and the twist of his gut reminded him that vicious hunger remained lying in wait to bring out the worst in him. Absentmindedly, he rubbed the thin fabric over his stomach, and Leilani’s eyes, catching the light of day, flashed—purple? Violet? Maybe Simon had imagined it. Only pure amber gazed back at him now, brimming gorgeously with dawn’s bounty.  
“Then would you like to come have brunch at O’Keefe Place?” she offered. Simon scrunched his nose, wrinkling the pale skin between his eyebrows.  
“O’Keefe Place?” he echoed. “What’s that? A café?” Because “O’Keefe Place” sure sounded like some posh café, the kind that had white tablecloths and book-bounded menus written in near illegible cursive. Leilani’s curls bounced in lush waves as she lightly shook her head.  
“It’s a boarding house,” she explained, “for people who don’t…quite fit the mold. Even amongst our own kind. People like us.”  
A more skeptical soul would have questioned the wisdom of putting faith in a girl he just met. In a person who was so clearly something other than human without giving away any clear indication of what that something was. Yet Simon was tired—exhausted—and not entirely convinced existing was worthwhile. If brunch turned out to be an epically bad idea, then he could always run himself through on some sharp instrument and finish the task he came to the river to complete. And besides, Leilani had no expectation of him. She wasn’t like Clary, clinging to the Simon Before, or Raphael, pushing him to forget that there had been a Before. With Leilani, he just was. It would be nice to just to be for a while. Even if “a while” was the span of brunch.  
“Sure,” Simon said finally. “I’ll come.” Leilani’s smile stretched beautifully into a wide, raspberry grin.  
“Wonderful,” she murmured. She reached into the paisley pouch of her satchel, rummaged through its contents, and then pulled out a lime green sundress. “Once Noelle arrives, we’ll get going.” Simon’s mouth puckered into a question.  
“Who’s—” The sudden whoosh of a wave cut him off, and a silver, watery plumb rose and immediately plummeted over the runaway rock like a miniature tsunami. Yelping, Simon leapt out of the path of the spray and stumbled over his heels, falling flat on his butt. A melodic giggle descended like the drops of summer rain.  
“For a vampire, you’re awfully clumsy.” A vividly flamboyant flash nearly blinded Simon, and he rubbed his eyes vigorously to soothe the sting. Once they adjusted, he looked up again to see the glaring colors soften into the curves of a mermaid’s tail. The fin, broad and feathery like a that of a betta fish, began as a rich ruby red that faded quickly into a marigold orange as intense as the sky on the verge of sunset. At the bridge of fin and tail, the small petal-shaped scales lightened into a scintillating sunflower yellow, marine beauty that made even the ornate coats of koi seem dull. The yellow continued all the up to an hourglass set of hips, where it then gave way to an expanse of silky, dark mocha brown. Simon’s gaze climbed further, passing by a pierced bellybutton and traveling through the borders of a narrow waist, but he hurled his stare to the lavender-steaked sky upon realizing that, unlike family-friendly Disney princess Ariel, this mermaid did not wear a conservative seashell bra. She wasn’t wearing a bra at all.  
“Noelle, that wasn’t very nice,” Leilani tutted.  
“Sorry,” Noelle apologized sheepishly. “We fey have terrible filters.”  
“Uh, no worries,” Simon mumbled. “It’s okay.” Carefully, oh so carefully, he lowered his eyes. Noelle had a cheerfully pretty face, with dimpled apple cheeks and big, expressive doe brown eyes. Her ebony hair sat twisted into a braided bun decorated with a piece of coral that a resembled a carnation in full bloom. The coral’s fire opal coloring smartly complimented the paradise ombre of her tail.  
“Oh!” Noelle squealed. “You’re adorable!” She whipped her head excitedly toward Leilani. “He’s adorable! Can we take him home? Please!”  
“Simon’s not a puppy, Noelle,” Leilani admonished. “But he is coming to brunch.” Wagging her fin, Noelle clapped exuberantly.  
“Awesome!” she cheered. “Oh! Then we should stop by Winston’s on the way back. Winston carries the best blood—or so I’m told. Never tried myself, of course. I’m more a fish-n-chips kind of girl.” She grinned widely, revealing teeth needle sharp like a carnivorous pike’s. It’s almost comical, her pretty features, imbued with Pollyanna optimism, juxtaposed against a set of choppers designed to rip apart flesh. In that moment, she was exactly what Simon usually pictured when it came to the fey—sinister loveliness. He must have flinched, because Noelle’s grin instantly shrank, and she touched the corner of her mouth nervously.  
“A Fish-n-chips girl?” Simon said with harried regret. “Then you should try the fish tacos they got at Pedro’s on Jefferson. If I could ever eat regular food again, they’d be the first thing I’d want.” Like a flame flaring back to flame, Noelle beamed.  
“That good?” she asked eagerly. “Really?”  
“They’re out of this world,” he affirmed. Smiling serenely once more, Leilani lifted the green sundress up to Noelle.  
“We should go,” Leilani advised. “You know how upset Eshana gets when a meal is delayed.” Noelle, accepting the dress, let out a petulant snort.  
“Eshana is such a mother hen,” she complained, turning to Simon. “Whatever you do, eat—well, in your case, drink—everything that Eshana puts in front of you. If you don’t, then she’ll think you’re sick, and the next thing you know you’ll be in bed being spoon-fed. Once, I left four bites of flounder on my plate, and Eshana didn’t let me leave my room for a week.”  
Having given Simon fair warning, Noelle flicked her tail, once, twice, and sunflower yellow ignited into a pearly glow. The glow then dimming like waxing moonlight, her scales cascaded down to the sand as if they were nothing more than a charmeuse slip. Simon gaped gracelessly as the fin too fell away and collapsed in a ripple of ruby and marigold, leaving in its wake a pair of pretty, brown bare feet.  
Simon swung his eyes back up to the sky overhead. Noelle’s coquettish giggle tickled his ears, and he tried ardently not to think about how, just a few feet away, a beautiful girl sat nude on a river rock. Instead, he gazed up at the receding purple of day’s first light and the blooming blue that flowered its place.


	2. Part I, Chapter 2: House of the Fabled

  1. House of the Fabled



To the mundane eye, O’Keefe Place was a dilapidated Manhattan ruin of the Glided Age. But through the glamour, Simon could see that the mansion, four stories of whitewashed limestone, was still at the peak of its glory. The tycoon who had built it must have gotten his inspiration from the stately country manors of Britain, because it strongly reminded Simon of Mr. Darcy’s home in an adaption of _Pride and Prejudice_ that he had been forced to watch once with his mom and sister. He half-expected a footman to appear out of the towering oak doors and offer to take the bag from Winston’s Butcher Shop off Noelle’s hands, but she skipped up the front steps ungreeted and disappeared into the manor, pausing a brief second to wave Leilani and Simon in after her.

“Come on!” she chirped. “If we don’t beat Samir to the table, he’ll guzzle down all the guava juice! I’ve been dreaming about that juice for the last month!”

“A month?” Simon pondered aloud. “Did she just get back from long trip?”

“Noelle has to return to the sea once a year,” Leilani replied as they climbed the stairs, “to keep her skin from drying out.” 

“Her skin—oh, you mean her...tail.” He glanced at the paisley satchel that sat on Leilani’s hip, and through the open mouth of its pouch, he glimpsed a shimmer of yellow scales.

“Noelle’s a selkie,” Leilani elaborated. “A mermaid who can walk on land.”

“So, she’s the mermaid equivalent of a daylighter.,” Simon deduced. He proffered a cheesy grin. “A landwalker.”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “Selkies and daylighters are equally rare. And when I say ‘rare,’ I mean most believe they don’t exist. That they are the stuff of legends.” She tittered knowingly. “But that, though, could be said of everyone who lives here. In a way, O’Keefe Place is a house of the fabled.”

Befuddlement blotted over Simon’s mind, as he followed Leilani’s lead into a magnificent marble foyer that boasted twin grand staircases, one uncurling along either side. Overhead, a four-tiered crystal chandelier cast a flurry of sunlight diamonds across the gold leafed laurels etched into the high ceiling, and Simon, trying to absorb every brilliant detail, kept his neck arched back, as he shuffled through a Romanesque archway of white molded plaster. He immediately paid for his inattention, stumbling over a sudden rise in the floor, and he would have landed face first into a Persian carpet had Leilani not seized his forearm and salvaged his balance.

“So, Noelle wasn’t exaggerating,” came a cool drawl. “For one of the Night Children, you are indeed _extraordinarily_ uncoordinated.”

The voice had drifted down imperiously over a long, formal dining table that had been set for at least a dozen people, an Easter blue porcelain plate and silver utensils laid neatly before each chair of dark oak. Sitting toward the middle on the far side of the table, Noelle was pouring herself a generous helping of cream colored juice from a glass pitcher, which she slammed down dangerously onto the white tablecloth, sending juice sloshing over the pitcher’s rim.

“Felix!” she whined. “I told you he’s a fledgling! Practically a baby! And what baby knows how to walk minutes after being born?” Simon might have balked at being so casually compared to a helpless infant—and die a second death of embarrassment if he spent time thinking about the underline truth of the comparison—but he’s too busy trying not to gawk at Felix, a seemingly twentysomething man with coca brown skin who lounged in the chair to the immediate right of the table’s head. Long-limbed and toned like an Olympic swimmer, he had the face of Ralph Lauren model—prominent, flawlessly chiseled features arranged in perfect portion around dreamy hazel-green eyes that peered at Simon through thin, square-framed spectacles. On Simon, glasses had only heightened his dorkiness, but on Felix, they added supremely to his aura of “debonair intellectual,” the suave sort of sex appeal James Bond reputedly possessed. 

But all of this was a footnote in Simon’s mind. It’s the wings that had raptured him. Six-feet in length, they spanned Felix’s entire height, and Simon could only imagine what they looked like spread wide, their pearl and gold feathers backdropped by the glowing simmer of the sun. Felix arched a thick eyebrow, as he leisurely sipped at a steaming mug of coffee.

“Let us get the obvious question out of the way,” he murmured. “I’m a warlock, and these—” His wings fluttered not unlike a cat flicking its tail in irritation. “—are my Warlock mark.”

“Seriously?” Simon blurted out. “I mean, no disrespect man, but I never would’ve guessed—they’re really…pretty—not that I’m saying you’re pretty or girly—You seem like a pretty manly, dude—but all the warlocks I’ve met, their marks are _way_ different. You know, horns, green skin, cat eyes—”

Magnus’ gold cat eyes flashed in his head like a lightning strike, and, abruptly, Simon stopped. _That’s right. Magnus was there too._ Another bolt of lightning, and he could see Magnus slumped against a brick wall and blinking wearily, his magic too drained to conceal his eyes’ true hue. _Was Magnus all right? Did he survive?_ Though it no longer beat, his heart lurched at the grim prospect that Magnus hadn’t made it out of that alley alive—

“Your friend is fine,” Felix chimed. His tone had shifted to something kinder. More understanding. “He is healing in the care his lover.” _Lover?_ Simon wondered. _Did he mean Alec?_ _Wait_ —

“How do you know that?” Simon demanded quietly. “How did you even know what I was think—”

“Felix has particular abilities,” Leilani interjected gingerly. “One of those is sensing perceived wrongs—trespasses. Trespasses someone believes have been committed against them. And trespasses someone believes they’ve committed. He can determine the validity of that perception.”

“The trespass has to be real, not imagined,” Noelle added, “for him to work his magic.”

“Magic?” Simon parroted.

“Revenge spells,” Felix said simply. “They’re my specialty. But like Noelle said, for them to work, there must be an actual wrong to avenge. “

“He’s an avenging angel,” Noelle whispered loudly, as if she were sharing a secret. “An eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. That’s his bread and butter.”

“Avenging angel is such a terrible misnomer,” Felix scoffed. “Vengeance is not in an angel’s purview. Justice, yes. Vengeance, no. That falls under a much darker domain. And it doesn’t come cheap.” Giving Simon a calculating onceover, Felix cocked his head.

“You didn’t wrong your friend,” he reiterated, “but someone has wronged you, haven’t they? Someone close—no, the closest person to you.” Simon tensed, as Felix’s stare dug deeper, bringing up the shrapnel still lodged in Simon’s inwards.

“Rage like that,” Felix murmured, “only comes from the corpse of friendship and trust. That girl—the pretty little redhead—she’s the worst kind of selfish. The kind that mistakes greed for love.”

“Hey!” Simon snapped, unsheathing his fangs. He meant to defend Clary, to regale her many positive attributes, but his tongue refused to move. It’s gagged by the memory of Clary’s unapologetic tone. _I couldn’t lose you too_. The worst kind of selfish. 

“You’re better off,” Felix declared. “She’s not worth—”

“Felix,” Leilani interceded. “Please. Leave him be.” If Felix was inclined to disagree, the urge seemed to pass like a fast-moving cloud, as a thin, petite boy with Asian features and longish, reddish-brown hair entered the room. With a gloved hand, he held a long white cane in front of him and moved it in a metronomic swing, its tip tapping dully against the plush carpet. His eyes were clouded over, almost completely white like tiny twin moons, but they still landed on Felix with surprising precision.

“You didn’t wake me up,” the boy growled. The beautifully crafted angles of his pale, narrow face—small, delicate, and fragile like a snowflake—fired off a nasty scowl, but Felix only smiled.

“You looked too cute to wake up,” Felix said. “Besides, I hadn’t completely ruled out breakfast in bed.” 

“Oh, _ew_. People eat here, you know. Take the barf-fest somewhere else.” This instruction came from behind Simon, and whirling around, he discovered a trio of girls, each still wearing fragments of sleep. The central girl, with her strawberry blonde hair, sun-kissed skin, and bright baby blues, could have been the hot girl in every country song, except for, of course, the sixteen-point antlers that sprouted imperially out the top of her head like grand sequoia trees. She fixed a vicious glare on Felix.

“Good morning, Brielle,” Felix murmured. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” Brielle deadpanned, “a baby whose room is next door to a horny warlock and a yuki-onna halfing who howls like a banshee every time he shoots one off. Did you really have to go for the fifth o? Were you going for a record or something?”

“Five times?” the girl flanking Brielle’s left purred. She was big-breasted but otherwise had a sculpted athletic build—her gun show made Simon’s biceps look like a water pistol giveaway. Outwardly, there was nothing that marked her as anything beyond human, but Simon’s instinctual alarm bells started to sound like a tornado warning, as he took in her deep set, leering viridian eyes. _Werewolf_. _But more than that_ , his intuition screeched. More than that, and thus more dangerous. 

“Impressive, Danny,” she cooed at the boy with the cane, twisting a strand of her platinum waves around her finger. “If you ever feel like trying something new, come knock on my door. I’ll put that stamina to good use.”

“Not a shot in hell, Sage,” Danny barked, as he marched to the seat beside Felix and promptly plopped down. “Not a shot in hell.”

“Seconded most emphatically,” Felix concurred, his tone even and steady. His right wing arched slightly and then folded around Danny, hiding him from the view of the rest of the room.

“You two take everything too seriously,” Sage sighed dramatically. She switched her hips and folded her arms right beneath her breasts, and then viridian slid seamlessly to Simon.

“You, I hope,” she enunciated deliberately, “can take a joke. Biology is already against us. If you have no sense of humor, then I really don’t see how I’m going to able to suppress the urge to throttle you.”

“Wow,” Simon squeaked. “‘Hello’ really isn’t in the werewolf dictionary, is it? Or are death threats the customary greeting?”

“Witty,” Sage admired. “And not bad looking—for a vamp. I can work with that.” Offering a tantalizingly feral simper, she sashayed past Simon and claimed the seat directly across from Danny. 

“Keep it in your pants, Sage,” Brielle groaned as she followed her to the table. “Literally—keep it in your pants. We’ve all seen your snatch and ass enough times to sue you for psychological torture.”

“Torture? _This_ is a torture device,” Sage countered, plucking at her tank strap as if handling a worm. “It hinders the natural state.”

“Preach!” a new arrival crowed. A shirtless, walking-talking ad for Abercrombie and Flich strolled in, leading with a maple-colored washboard six-pack. He ran his fingers through his thick, gelled black hair, dark copper eyes flashing a devilish scarlet, as they surveyed his housemates. 

“Forget something, Samir?” Noelle, clearly unimpressed, huffed. “Like how to get dressed?”

“Fish breath!” Samir cried with mock enthusiasm. “You’re back! How did you like my ‘Welcome Gift’?”

“What gift?” Noelle asked, brow furrowing.

“Oh, wait, was that the bucket of…muck at the top of the west stairs?” Sage murmured as she reached for a wine glass of water. “Jang-mi’s the one who stumbled upon that…treasure.”

Blanching a few shades lighter, Samir’s head snapped toward the remaining third of the female trio, who had been standing so silently that Simon had all but forgotten she was even there. Asian, she was slender and willowy, with skin as white and smooth as porcelain, and her large, almond eyes were downcast dolefully, nearly hidden behind a pin-straight curtain of ebony hair. She reminded Simon of spring rain—pretty, pure, and inexplicably poignant. 

“J-Jang-mi,” Samir stuttered. “I-I-didn’t m-mean…that wasn’t—” Saying nothing, Jang-mi glided to the chair next to Brielle, and as she went, Simon caught sight of a fan of white fox tails that grew from the base of her spin. He attempted to count them but, not wanting to be accused of ogling her butt, quickly gave up after the fifth.

“Boy has no game,” Simon’s sensitive ears heard Sage mutter under her breath. “None.” 

“Put a damn shirt on already,” Brielle ordered gruffly. “Hurry up before the old man and the kid come down.”

“Eshana’s the one he needs to worry about,” Danny said. Felix had retracted his wing to allow him to join the conversation. “Remember the last time someone came to the table half-dressed?”

“I wasn’t aware you could inflict that much damage with a chicken leg,” Noelle recalled with a shiver.

“Alright, alright!” Samir conceded. He snapped his fingers, and there was a sudden burst of sparking smoke that wound around Samir’s torso in fat, dark swirling columns. It dissipated quickly, evaporating into a fitted red t-shirt. “Happy?”

“Well, my day has _vastly_ improved,” Noelle jabbed dryly. 

“Glad to be of service, fish sticks,” Samir replied with faux graciousness. “I’ll think of some way for you to repay me.”

“Are they always like this?” Simon asked Leilani, as the volley of insults continued.

“Yes,” Leilani answered with equal parts exasperation and fondness. “Samir’s part djinn, born from smoke and fire, and with Noelle being a selkie, born of water—they’ve never quite gotten along.”

“That,” Sage added, having overheard, “and Noelle’s never forgiven Samir for turning her pet bunny into foam.”

“Why would you turn a bunny into foam?” Simon inquired incredulously. “That seems a little…extreme.”

“It wasn’t a bunny,” Samir cut in indignantly. “Its _name_ was ‘Bunny,’ and it was a _kraken_ that she kept in a hot tub. Who keeps a man-eating octopus in a hot tub!” Noelle shot up from her chair, almost toppling it over.

“Bunny was a sweetheart!” Noelle shouted. “She never would’ve hurt anyone.”

“So, when it dangled me over its mouth, it only meant to shower me in kisses?” Samir scoffed. “It wanted to devour me whole!”

“Bunny had better taste than that!” Noelle shrieked. The tail end of her sentence skyrocketed to shrill heights, her pike teeth on full, gruesome display. Simon’s hands clapped over his ears, as the pitch drilled into his skull and threatened to split bone apart. Through the agony, he heard the distinctive cacophony of the crack and shatter of glass, and his gaze hazily darted to Sage’s crystal chalice, of which only a stem remained. The rest lied in sparkling shards on Sage’s plate like an inedible appetizer.

“Oh!” Noelle gasped. She slapped her palm over her mouth and sank slowly back into her chair, the debate over Bunny’s demise swallowed by the jaws of an awkward, jarring silence. 

“That,” Simon said to Noelle, breaking the jagged quiet with a nervous grin, “is one hell of a soprano. I beat you kick ass at karaoke.” A beat. Then a giggle. Another. And suddenly, Noelle was laughing hysterically, letting her palm fall to the table top and her smile shine wide and toothy. Sage and Samir joined her, guffawing unashamed, while Danny tried—and failed—to conceal a chuckle. Brielle only snorted, and Jang-mi seemed unmoved, but the corners of her lips twitched ever so slightly up. Smirking, Felix waved his hand, as the broken glass vanished, replaced by a new, unblemished cup. 

“I think,” Leilani hummed, touching Simon’s arm lightly, “you’ll fit in just fine.”


	3. Part I, Chapter 3: Shadows of Past Lives

Shadows of Past Lives

_Jace’s mismatched eyes—one gold, one sapphire—were unyielding. “Simon,” he begged hoarsely. “Simon, please…Simon…you…”_

_Leisurely, Simon licked his protruding fangs. Something smelled sweet…so sweet…_

_His resistance faltered. So sweet…_

_“Simon…Simon…”_

_He dove in for a drink and gulped like a starving beast._

_He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop._

_“Simon…Simon…Si—”_

“—mon? Simon, wake up, son.” Simon jerked violently, almost rolling off the suede sofa. Above him, a gently lined face hemmed with a salt and pepper beard hovered anxiously. 

“M-mr. O’Keefe!” he sputtered, swinging his sneakers to the floor. “S-sorry, I d-didn’t mean to fall asleep here.”

“It’s quite alright, Simon,” Mr. O’Keefe assured, his words rising and falling in the cadence of his Irish brogue, still thick despite almost a decade away from the emerald isle. “But you’re lucky it was me who found you and not Eshana. If it had been her, you might have been on bedrest until Christmas.” 

Simon shuddered. The boarding house’s proprietor was right—if Eshana had come across him sleeping in the East Wing sitting room in the middle of the day, she would have instantly deemed him ill and dragged him to bed. And when Eshana said you were sick, you were until she decided you weren’t. No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. 

Mr. O’Keefe settled into an overstuffed, beige recliner adjacent to the couch. He was a stocky, well-aging man, and in his maroon sweater vest and corduroy slacks, he reminded Simon of the classic Ivy League professor. His gray eyes, crinkled on their edges, certainly seemed to carry a lifetime’s worth of lessons.

“Aren’t you going out with the others?” Mr. O’Keefe asked. “To the festival?” Simon scratched the back of his head tiredly.

“…Probably not,” he mumbled.

“Why? Both Noelle and Samir both say it’s going to be fun, and that’s the first thing they’ve agreed on since—well, since you.”

One side of his mouth cocking up into a half-smile, Simon recalled his first day at O’Keefe place, now nearly a year past. He hadn’t known then that when Leilani had invited him to brunch, she was really offering him a new home. But the others had, and, in their own ways, gave their approval. For Noelle and Samir, that was a twenty-five-minute argument over which room Simon should move into. Noelle favored the vacant bedroom directly across from hers, Samir the empty suite next-to-door to his quarters. In the interest of keeping the peace, Simon elected to take up residence in the East Turret, which no one else wanted because it tended toward draftiness in all seasons. Temperature having no real bearing on him anymore, Simon didn’t mind the cold. That, and the view of dawn was best from the East Turret’s balcony. Simon liked to pass the early morning hours there, watching the sun stretch over the horizon in a burst of orangish golds. He needed the daily dosage of sun to bleach out the nightmares that darkened his threshold every night. And now, it seemed, afternoons too.

“I—” Simon began, shifting his gaze to the cream, gauzy curtains that veiled sitting room’s large, panoramic window. They glowed warmly with white sunlight. “—it’s in Brooklyn.”

“And whatever is the matter with Brooklyn?” Mr. O’Keefe chuckled. 

“Nothing,” Simon replied sluggishly. “It’s just…I—It used to be my stomping ground. I grew up there. I haven’t been back…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. Mr. O’Keefe nodded.

“I see,” he murmured as he leaned back into his chair. “My boy, it doesn’t do much good to live in fear of the shadows of past lives. If you do, you won’t do much living at all.” Simon swallowed, his throat clogged with the phlegm of everything he couldn’t say. Couldn’t face. Brooklyn wasn’t a shadow of his former self. It was the epicenter. 

“Grandpa,” a child’s call rang out. “Grandpa! Simon!” The hinges of the sitting room’s door creaked metallically, an unsettling noise quickly proceeded by the scurry of small bare feet on hardwood floor. From behind the recliner appeared a pretty little girl, her eyes the same shade of gray as Mr. O’Keefe, brighter but just as deep and just as wise.

“Yes, Sophelia?” Mr. O’Keefe queried kindly. He placed a weathered hand atop of his granddaughter’s head and gave her tawny hair a stroke, careful, however, not to disturb her expertly plaited pigtails. Eshana would _not_ have been happy if she discovered her hard work ruined by unthinking fingers.

“Someone’s coming,” Sophelia announced. “He’s almost here. And he’s going to hurt Leilani.” Simon’s spine went rigid.

“What?” he said, a growl coursing just beneath his words. Unperturbed, little Sophelia blinked.

“Someone’s coming,” she reiterated. She blinked again, something passing behind her eyes. Gray glimmered rainbow. “He’s here.” Simon stood.

“Where?” he demanded. “Where’s Leilani?” 

“The garden,” Sophelia chirped. Her voice was light, childish, yet her stare seemed heavy and ancient. “By the willow tree.” 

His inhuman speed kicking into high gear, Simon flew. He dashed down through doors and down stairs, the house blurring into a tunnel of oak and marble. Autumn air slammed into him like a Mack truck, as he darted across the back veranda and sped past October roses, their peach-yellow hue flashing at the corners of his eyes. The willow tree stood at the garden’s edge, near the bank of a mirror surfaced pond, which reflected the willow’s glorious plumage of reeds, colored harvest gold by fall’s paintbrush. Beneath them, Leilani, in a mustard yellow sweater dress that highlighted the amber of her eyes, was luminous. 

And, as Sophelia had predicted, she was not alone.

“…being _absolutely_ ridiculous.” Simon didn’t recognize the voice. It was a deep baritone that, for a reason he couldn’t specify, reminded Simon of the roar of a tremendous flame. Of the thunderous crackle of a raging wildfire.

“Brother,” Leilani sighed, her sweet, mellow voice battle worn, “Please, you must let it go now. I am at peace—”

“Peace?” the foreign voice snarled. “Is that what you call foolishness that has only brought tears? And do you know what your tears have wrought, sister?” Leilani’s honey amber widened, glazing over with shocked confusion. A cruel laugh drifted on the wind.

“Did you really think he’d keep them sister?” came the sizzling jeer. “Why would he? How could he possibly know their worth? Their power? What would they matter to him?” Leilani’s breath hitched, releasing a gasp like a pained songbird. _He’s going to hurt Leilani._ Simon had envisioned bodily harm when Sophelia had said those words. Blood and broken bone. But Leilani’s face awash in heartbreak, wincing due to the kind of wound you couldn’t see, was just as sickening. Maybe

more so.

“Leave her alone,” Simon commanded, coming to a halting stop between Leilani and the stranger. 

“Is this your latest _pet_ , sister?” the baritone sniggered. “A Daylighter? Wherever did you find him?” The boy’s relation to Leilani was obvious in his golden-brown beauty. He also had the same pitch-black curls, which he wore in a thick ponytail that fell just past his shoulder blades. But that was where the similarity ended. He had none of Leilani’s softness or gentle demeanor. Instead, the air about him stung like a burn, and, dressed in what could’ve been last night’s club clothes, he was all brick hard muscle, towering a good three or four inches over Simon. His eyes were a blazing, brooding bister, not unlike tempest clouds boiling with lightening. They sliced right through Simon, as if they didn’t see him at all.

“He’s my friend, Keahi,” Leilani corrected, stepping to Simon’s side. “I would prefer it if you were kinder to him.”

“And _I_ would prefer it,” Keahi snapped, “if you weren’t rolling around in the mud and acting like you don’t know where true beauty lies. It’s high time that you remember who you are and come home.”

“I am home, brother,” Leilani said almost apologetically. Keahi’s face twisted into an infuriated grimace, like a match struck and exploding into fire. He took a step threatening forward.

“Sister—”

“It’s high time for _you_ to leave,” Simon interrupted. His upper lip curled back to reveal his descended fangs. Keahi, unbothered, laughed dryly.

“I’d think twice, Daylighter,” he warned. “You might be gifted for _your_ kind, but you’re no match for me. Or my sister.” Amusement tinged the last of his words, implying he meant “match” in a different way for Simon and Leilani than for Simon and himself, and Simon bristled at the implication. Keahi simply sneered wider.

“Brother,” Leilani entreated, “please. Go.” Bister brewed darker, drilling a hole into Leilani’s back as she turned away.

“Fine,” Keahi spat. “But if you think this conversation is over, sister, then you are _sorely_ mistaken.” With that, a sudden gust caused the willow reeds to stream sideways in a golden, ferocious rush, and when they collapsed back into place moments later, Keahi was gone.

“Well, he’s _charmer_ ,” Simon huffed, retracting his fangs. “Sure you two are related?”

“He’s my twin,” Leilani replied. She had made her way over to the pond and was staring out to the other side, where a cluster of maples grew. The intense burgundy of their leaves was reflected impeccably on the pond’s still surface, as if a bold swath of red paint had been brushed across it.

“He’s worried about me,” she continued. “I’ve made decisions that…don’t align with tradition.” Silently, Simon treaded over to where she stood. She had never talked about herself this much before, and though he had wondered countless times, he had never asked her about her Before. That was the unspoken house rule, after all, not asking about life Before O’Keefe Place. It’s a rule Simon was happy to abide by most of the time. Yet, every now and then, he looked into Leilani’s eyes—that deep, beautiful ochre—and wondered. 

“You don’t strike me as the rebellious type,” Simon mused. “Let alone the black sheep of the family.” And she didn’t. But, then again, he had always sensed her undercurrent of subtle fortitude, and maybe that had translated into the defying of expectations in unexpected ways.

“Black sheep?” she hummed. “I suppose I am. My people have a different word, though, for someone who chooses the wrong path.”

“Wrong or different?” he challenged gently. She looked at him, a benevolent smile blossoming between her aureate cheeks. Her scent—potent, sugary jasmine—perfumed the quiet breeze and wafting willow reeds. Simon’s chest rose with an unnecessary breath and welcomed her essence in. If he could, he would have willed the world end right here and spend the rest of eternity in this moment. 

“Yo! Stomaching-turning turtledoves!” Simon jumped, wobbling precariously before pitching to the left toward the water. An urgent tug at his elbow, and he suddenly reversed course but lost none of his momentum. His back hit browned grass, while Leilani collided with his chest. Her curls waterfalled around him, grazing his forehead, nose, ears, lips, and all he could see was the glittering gold of her eyes. It was so close, like drops of amber suspended midair. So close he could shift out flecks of amethyst from aurum. So close—

“You know,” Brielle grinded above them, “I expect exhibitionism from Sage. It’s her favorite hobby. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find Danny and Felix getting it on in a public place. Scarred for life? Yes. Surprised? No. But _you_ two—I had hoped for at least the pretense of decency.” Simon’s skin heated with a blush he could only imagine, not produce.

“It’s not—” he started, but Brielle silenced him with a snort.

“Don’t drop that line,” she said. “It’s cliché, and you saying it suggests you think I’m dumb enough to buy it. And thinking that is hazardous for your health. Now, stop pawing at Leilani, and get up. We’re leaving for the festival in five.”

She was stomping off before Simon could tell her that he hadn’t really planned on going. That, despite Mr. O’Keefe’s probably sound advice, he didn’t want to a chance a run-in with the past. Then, Leilani’s laugh leapt into the boughs above, a twinkling melody that called to mind flutes and chimes, and, joining in, Simon forgot his reservations.

“So,” Samir uttered as he plopped a bubblegum pink piece of cotton candy onto his tongue, “when you are finally going to man-up and lock that down?”

“What?” Simon squawked hoarsely. The symphony of the Fall Ball Carnival buzzed all around them—the humming chatter of ambling crowds, the exuberant cries of excited children, the mechanical tinkling of games, the distant singing of an indie-rock band. Twilight was nearing, the stain of evening indigo seeping into the sky, and the electric lights of rides and attractions had started to build into a rainbow adagio.

“Dude,” Samir deadpanned in a drawn-out timbre that made it clear he knew they both knew exactly what he was talking about. But, as if to underline the subject, he glanced obviously ahead, where Leilani was walking between Noelle and Jang-mi.

“It’s not like _that_ ,” Simon groaned lowly. “Why does everyone think—”

“—that you want give her your letterman and class ring and announce to the world that you’re going steady?” Samir finished.

“What era are you from? The 1950’s?” 

“What? Can’t dig it?” Rolling his eyes, Simon quickened his pace, but Samir kept up with ease as he broke off another piece of pink fluff from the cone held in his right hand. “Never took you for a commitment-phobe, man.”

“I’m _not_.”

“Really?” Samir questioned with alacritous flair. “Then what is it? Because I don’t get it. Is there something wrong with her? A secret obsession with My Little Pony? A hideous true form?”

“No,” Simon hissed, perhaps with more poison than warranted. “There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s…she’s—”

“—flawless,” Samir, satisfied, supplied. “To you, she’s flawless. Because we’re all flawless when beheld in a loving eye.” Briefly, his bronze gaze flickered to Jang-mi.

“It’s not like that,” Simon continued to insist. He shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to think of a way to describe the bond between him and Leilani. How to best explain that their intimacy lacked the romance everyone else believed they saw. That not all attraction had its roots in infatuation. That sometimes love was purely companionate. That when he looked at Leilani—looked into her amber eyes—an empathetic soul looked back. But the words didn’t come, and Samir drew his own conclusion.

“You’re afraid,” Samir said casually. “Afraid of something. If not commitment, then maybe the intensity of it all. Maybe you’re scared that if you get too close, you’ll go up in flames. If that’s it, man, you shouldn’t be worried. I know. My parents were those people. The people who love until the world around them is ash. I know those people, and you and Leilani—you aren’t them. Never will be. Neither one of you have enough hate in you to love like that.”

In the neon lights, Samir’s face wore an uncharacteristically somber expression, like the bleak stare of a graveyard angel, and, for a minute, he was gone, walking not beside Simon in a carnival crowd, but alone down a path of bygones. Simon let him take his time in returning. All the tenants of O’Keefe’s Place went down that road time to time, even unflinching Brielle, who, last winter, Simon had seen dumbstruck by the first frost as if knifed and left for dead.

“Jang-mi and I are going to get funnel cakes,” Noelle declared, as she twirled around. 

“Didn’t you just stuff your face with corn dogs and caramel corn?” Samir pointed out. He was back, wearing his usual trickster grin. 

“Yeah,” Noelle responded petulantly, “and now I’m going to stuff my face with funnel cakes. And after that ice cream and fried twinkies. In a couple weeks, my options will be limited to fish, seaweed, and eel for a month. So, yes, I’m stuffing my face with all the flavors you can’t find under the sea.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Samir sighed dreamily, “thirteen days, five hours, and forty-six minutes until a whole glorious month fish breath-free.” Sticking her tongue out between her needle teeth, Noelle reached behind Leilani and grabbed Jang-mi’s elbow.

“Let’s go, Jang-mi.”

“Hold up,” Samir said, “I’m coming too.”

“Why?” Noelle cried. “You haven’t even finished your cotton candy.” Instantly, the cone of pink cottony sugar in Samir’s hand disappeared in a puff of smoke. Startled, Simon whipped his head side-to-side, but no one had so much glanced in their direction. The impressive strength of Jang-mi’s illusionary power had yet to lose its novelty. To the mundane masses mulling around them, they appeared to be just ordinary college kids enjoying a night out, and Samir’s djinn magic had likely looked as if he had simply chunked the cotton candy into a nearby trashcan. 

“Look,” he replied, “all done.” Noelle sniffed, clearly unpleased with Samir inviting himself along, but she, knowing there was no point in trying to dissuade him, said nothing as she marched off, pulling a complacent Jang-mi behind her. Samir followed triumphantly, and the three of them disappeared into the throng.

“Hypocrite,” Simon grumbled to himself. “When is _he_ going to man-up?”

“He wants to,” Leilani said, closing the small distance between them. “But it’s hard to tell someone how feel when you know that you’re alone in that feeling.”

It was just the two of them now. Felix and Danny had splintered off hand in gloved hand as soon as they had arrived at the carnival an hour and half earlier, and Brielle and Sage had followed suit not long after, off to find attractions of the adult persuasion.

“I guess that’s true,” Simon uttered. His chest throbbed with the phantom pain of old heartbreaks. “There’s hope in never knowing.”

“There’s just as much agony in wishing,” Leilani mused. She lifted her eyes to his, and their amber glinted with the iridescent shine of carnival lights—blue, green, purple. Slowly, Simon reached for her hand, but just his fingertips touched the fate lines of her palm, she jerked back suddenly. The adagio of colors sped furiously into an allegro in her irises, as she swung her body around, and, staring at the dark space between a balloon dart booth and a shooter game, her gaze flared with a scintillating glow of jewel tones. Ruby. Emerald. Gold. Amethyst. 

“Leilani?” Simon said worriedly. “Leilani, what is it—”

Abruptly, she broke into a charge, practically flinging herself between the two games. Without a second thought, Simon chased after her into shadows. She was faster than he had ever realized, and standing in the mouth of the alleyway directly behind the booths, Simon momentarily fretted that he had lost her. But the scent of night-blooming jasmine, still noticeable despite the nauseating stench of rotting garbage, assured him that he had not. Cautiously, he stalked into the alley, his sneakers silent against the cracked cement. The floral aroma grew more potent the nearer he drew to a dumpster at the alley’s end, and, as he rounded the rusty blue container, Leilani came into view. Head bowed, she was kneeling, her tendrils of curls completely concealing her face.

“Leilani,” Simon whispered. “Leilani, what’s going on—” He looked down, as the toe of his shoe hit something—the scrapped and bloody sole of a man’s caramel-skinned foot. Jumping half a step back, Simon’s horrified stare traced along the rest of the body. Long legs also littered with weeping cuts. A naked groin that Simon politely skimmed past. A toned, muscled chest caked in dirt and bruises. Bronze shoulders propped up in Leilani’s arms.

“Leilani?” he repeated almost voicelessly. This time, Leilani raised her head, and the veil of curls fell away. If Simon had breath, he would’ve sucked it in. His lungs would’ve seized, immobilized by the impossible. Because it was impossible—those gold cat eyes blinking feverously. Maybe he was still in the East Wing sitting room, dreaming. Maybe this was just another nightmare about the night that refused to fade even a degree in his memory. 

But if he were dreaming—nightmaring—Leilani wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t be cradling Magnus’ head against her breasts, and she wouldn’t be cooing at him like a mother trying to soothe her whimpering newborn. And Magnus wouldn’t be squinting at him with uncertain recognition.

“S-sim-on?” the warlock slurred. “Si-mon? Is that y-you?”


	4. Part I, Chapter 4: Angel of Mercy

“You know him, Simon?” Leilani asked. She was petting Magnus’ black hair, limp with grim and grease, and Magnus leaned exhaustedly into her ministrations.

“Do you?” Simon countered, not with animosity but rather confoundment. Leilani was holding Magnus like she knew him and knew him well. _Maybe_ , Simon considered silently, _maybe they’re were lovers once._ He had long suspected that Leilani was years older than the eighteen or nineteen she appeared to be, and if she was, it was very possible she had across paths with Magnus in an era now gone. But that theory went out the window when Leilani posed a second question.

“What’s his name, Simon?” 

“Magnus,” he replied. “Magnus Bane. He’s the High Warlock of Brooklyn…and my friend. He’s my friend.” _He’s my friend_. This truth kicking in like an old reflex, Simon shucked off his jacket and, bending down, draped it over Magnus’ shivering body.

“What happened, Magnus?” Simon demanded. “Who did this to you?” Cat eyes, unfocused, peered at him from under heavy, sweaty eyelids.

“S-simon,” Magnus rasped. “Simon, not yet…please…not yet…I can’t leave him….can’t leave Alex-an-der. Please…not yet…don’t let…her…take me…not yet…” His pleas trailed off, as feline gold rolled back and disappeared.

“He thinks I’m a ghost,” Simon said, swallowing, “and that you’re an angel…come to carry him home.” Leilani’s hand trailed down to Magnus’ cheek, and she lightly thumbed the clammy skin there.

“How do you know that?” she inquired mutedly.

“Because that’s what I thought when I first met you,” Simon remembered aloud. “That you were you an angel.”

“An angel of death,” Leilani specified. Sorrow was woven through her words, and Simon was grateful her eyes were still glued to Magnus.

“An angel of mercy,” he demurred. Silence, slinking in, coiled around them tightly.

“Who’s Alexander?” Leilani asked, trying to shake it off.

“Magnus’ boyfriend. They’re ridiculously in love, like, the epic, forever kind of love.”

“So,” she exhaled, giving Magnus’ cheek another stroke, “he has a _conpar_.”

“Conpar?” Simon repeated. “Leilani, what is going on? How did you know Magnus was here? And how did he end up like this? He’s a High Warlock—they’re not exactly pushovers.”

“…I’ll explain what I can, Simon,” she promised, looking up at him once more. Gold gleamed like smoldering embers in the freshly fallen night. “But first, we need to get him home—"

“The warlock comes with _us_.” Simon knew that quips about his lackluster coordination were rarely exaggerated. His Turning had not bestowed upon him the agility and poise that other vampires instinctually possessed, and he just might have been, as Sage constantly delighted in telling him, the Clumsiest-Night-Child-to-Ever-Stalk-the-Earth, or in Brielle-speak, Worst-Vamp- _Ever_. But there was something keenly, gracefully predatory about the way he glided to his feet. Something elegant about the way he prowled slowly toward the six shadowhunters. Something frightfully fluid about the way his fangs descended, their needle points twinkling in the wavering glow of seraphs blades.

“We have no quarrel with you, bloodsucker,” one of them sneered. She was a wiry woman, all sinew and tendon, and Simon could distinctly see each vibration of pulse that rolled through her veins beneath the ink black runes etched into the skin of her forearm. One, right before the bend of her elbow, was a thick, perfectly round circle, simple both in design and odium.

“The Circle,” Simon smirked sardonically. “Should’ve know your particular brand of scumbag was all over this.”

“Move aside, you disgusting creature,” the woman fumed, tightening her grip on the hilt of her sword. “This is no business of yours! The warlock belongs to us.”

“Magnus doesn’t belong to anyone,” Simon hissed acerbically. 

“We paid a pretty penny for him. Wanna see the receipt?” the Circle member joked cruelly. Except she wasn’t joking, Simon realized, as his gut pitched with a start. Her face, outlined ghoulishly in the seraph blade light, bore no sign of ill-minded jest. Only contemptuous gravity.

“Trappers,” Simon chuckled humorlessly. “You’re on their client list? Seriously? Where did all of you met? A villain convention? Was there a panel called ‘Domination Through Discrimination’? I bet Voldemort was the guest speaker, wasn’t he?”

“The vampire is clearly insane, Nightwine,” a bulky, sable-bearded man to the woman’s left barked. “And we’re wasting time. Valentine is waiting. Let’s get this done.”

“Agreed,” Nightwine concurred. “Kill the bloodsucker. The girl too. But remember Valentine’s order—do not damage the warlock. He’s more valuable than all your skins put together.”

The Circle members started to raise their blades high ablaze like torches. Bending his knees into a slight crouch, Simon curled back his lips and gnashed his fangs, a warning that would go unheeded. A battle cry cut the alley air, dense with rot and waste, and the bearded man, charging at Simon, leapt as he swept his blade even higher and then swung it down—

The slice froze. The shadowhunter’s whole body froze mid-air, and the seraph blade dropped from a limp grip, clattering violently against the cement. As its white glow dimmed to a fleeting flicker, the shadowhunter’s skin sagged like a wilting flower, fading fast from bronze to a pasty, colorless hue. It was as if the man was melting from the inside, his muscles, intestines, and bones oozing through his pores in dozens of little red rivers. The streams of inwards twisted down the length of the alley until they reached the tips of an intimidating set of antlers, spread wide like open jaws. 

“Well done, Simon,” Brielle smirked. “I was just thinking how hungry I was, and you go and find a ripe old bastard.”

“Yes, thank you,” Sage groaned. She was munching on a bag of popcorn with perfectly honed nonchalance. “You know how she gets when she’s hangry.”

“By the Angel!” hollered a third Circle member. He was the smallest of the bunch and sported a closely shaven buzzcut. “What-what the hell is that? What is it doing to Grunwald?”

“‘That?’” Brielle echoed, her blue eyes going as cold as artic wind. “‘It’?”

“No manners,” Sage said with faux despair. “Then again, what else can be expected of Nephilim? They’re not exactly the poster children for tolerance and acceptance.”

“Stay out of this mutt!” the G.I. Joe wannabe screeched. “I know _what_ you are, you vile werewolf.” Sage smiled, and, in the moonlight, her simper was an awful, monstrous thing.

“That ‘Holier-than-thou’ crap,” she told him, “ _irks_ me.” Buzzcut might have spouted off more racist rhetoric, but an emerald ball of magic came hurling out of Sage’s right hand, and, in instant, the shadowhunter went up in copper green flames. Seconds later, and he was but ash and dust in the wind, the only trace of him being the faint outline of a writhing, contorting body scorched into brick.

“Kenneth!” a shadowhunter with a high ponytail wailed. “No!” She made to lunge at Sage, but Nightwine held out an arm to stop her.

“Don’t, you idiot!” Nightwine instructed. “Do you want to be next?”

“But Kenneth—”

“—will be avenged,” Nightwine vowed. “Make no mistake. We _will_ avenge him—” She was silenced by an abrupt _thud_ \--no, more of a nauseating, sloshing sound--as what was left of Grunwald spattered to the ground. The lumpy mound didn’t remotely resemble flesh anymore, nor did the brownish slime it leaked seem in any way related to blood, and had it not been for the black gear poking out here and there, Simon’s eyes would never have been persuaded that it was once a man.

“Are you going to avenge him too?” Brielle drawled. Her antler points were lit up like Christmas lights, burning a brazen, malicious crimson. “He couldn’t have been the paradigm of humanity’s finer virtues—not if I could consume him so completely.”

Simon had seen Brielle fed only once more. It hadn’t been long after he had moved into O’Keefe’s Place, a couple of months or so, and they had all gone for a picnic in a nearby park for Sophelia’s seventh birthday. Sophelia had made a beeline for the swings she so adored, while Brielle had headed straight for a man reading a newspaper—or, rather, appeared to be reading a newspaper—on a wooden bench. Simon had watched as she sat down beside him, so cool and casual. So innocuous. Then the glamour concealing her antlers had rippled, and the shock of horror that had arrested the man’s face had told Simon that he had seen them. It also had told Simon that the man knew it would be the last thing he ever would see.

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Felix had said, as he had stopped Simon from intervening. “Don’t pity him. Brielle isn’t like the Night Children. She’s not even like a succubus. She can’t feed from just anyone as it suits her. Her prey are those who have perverted love and desecrated innocence. They are pitiless souls and thus forfeit pity for themselves. That man has forfeited pity. Didn’t you see how he was looking at Sophelia?” Simon had understood then, just as he understood now, and he had pity for neither that man nor Grunwald.

But the Circle members clearly didn’t understand. A shrill screech erupted from the lungs of the ponytailed girl, and she rocketed into a raging run, lifting her sword square above her shoulders. Her ignorance was lethally acute, for if she had realized what Brielle was, she would’ve known to keep her distance. After feeding, the strength of a deer woman was at its highest, her capacity for amnesty at its lowest. Brielle didn’t even blink, as her fingers sunk into the girl’s chest and then retracted, heart literally in hand. The girl, dead instantly, fell onto her back, and blood gushed out of the hole in her torso in a torrent of thick, claret red. For a moment, Brielle studied the heart, still contracting with wasted beats, before letting it roll out of her hand like a discarded toy. 

The moment the dying muscle hit the ground, the remaining Circle members sprung into battle. One went for Brielle, but Sage, unsheathing her claws, swiped at him, sending four curving lines of green magic careening through the air, and his body fell apart into five neat pieces, as if he had been put through a fruit slicer. Meanwhile, Nightwine spun on the ball of her feet and dashed toward Leilani and Magnus. Simon zoomed into her path, yet, like a well-trained fullback, the last of the Circle members blocked him, allowing Nightwine to pivot past. After, Simon wouldn’t be able to recall how he ripped the shadowhunter’s head clean off his pencil neck, but Brielle would recount that, in that moment, he could’ve passed for a decent vamp.

Presently, however, Simon only registered that the obstacle had been removed. He hurled after Nightwine, determined to drain her down to the last drop before she could harm a hair on Leilani or Magnus’ heads, but, circumnavigating the dumpster, Simon found that proved unnecessary. Nightwine had never had made it closer than four or five feet to her quarry. A large thicket of thorns—silvery diamond briar that had sprouted swiftly from between cement cracks—had entrapped her, and she was hanging impaled on the arm-length spikes as if she were a macabre ornament. She wheezed breathlessly, making a ghastly gurgling noise low in her throat, and then gagged on a cough, spewing soupy blood in a long, slow dribble. Her grey eyes, wide and shell-shocked, were latched onto Leilani, whose incandescent amber was gazing back like a stone cathedral cherub—divinely dispassionate.

“Yo-urs,” Nightwine rasped. “It…was…yo-yo-urs.”

“It was more than mine, “ Leilani replied evenly. “It was a part of me. As he—” Tenderly, she brushed her curled knuckles against Magnus’ temple. “—is now a part of me. Who are you to lay claim to me?” She never raised her voice, never varied her tone, but Nightwine trembled like the last of autumn leaves clinging to its branch and life amid tempest winds.

“W-we—I—” she whimpered. “—I—wanted…to…make the…wor-ld bet-ter…pure…”

“Child of Raziel,” Leilani said, “you’ve squandered angelic power on evil pursuit. Know that is why Heaven is lost to you.”

“W-what?” Nightwine squawked. “W-what…are..yo-u say-ing? I-I a-am Neph-ilium! A-a war-ri-or of…Heaven…Of course—the gates…will o-open for…m-me…”

“The downfall of every angel that ever fell,” Leilani murmured, “was pride.” Nightwine’s eyes stretched wider and went wild, grey swirling like storm clouds on the horizon. She opened her mouth, perhaps to rebut or protest, but all that came out was a fount of blood, and a sharp, rattling breath swallowed her final words.

“Leilani shish-kebabed a shadowhunter?” Samir exclaimed. “Our Leilani? Not possible! I mean, we are talking about the same person who won’t even squash spiders the way the little hellions deserve to be squashed! She takes them outside and everything! And you want me to believe she turned a shadowhunter into swish cheese? Nope, sorry, not buyin’ it.”

“Believe it, genie-boy,” Brielle quipped. “Leilani skewered a shadowhunter with a _rose bush_. Girl is officially _way_ more boss more than any of us could ever be.”

“And this was all over a warlock?” Noelle asked. “This Magnus Bane?” Simon nodded. They were all gathered in the East Wing sitting room, huddled around a low mahogany coffee table as they waited for Felix to return with an update. Only he had been permitted to follow Leilani to her room at the wing’s southern end, due in no small part to the fact that it was he who had carried Magnus through the portal home.

“Warlocks might not live in clans or packs,” Danny had whispered to Simon as Felix, steely eyed behind his glasses, had lifted Magnus out of Leilani’s arms, “but that doesn’t mean they’re any less protective of their own.”

“I know that name,” Sage said. She was sharing the large recliner with Samir, or, more precisely, was sitting on Samir, who had initially refused to scoot over to make space for her. So, she had opted to behave as if he wasn’t there and had draped herself over his lap, dangling her legs over the arm of the chair. Samir had started to fuss but promptly shut his mouth with one wolfish flash of Sage’s viridian eyes. 

“He’s the most prominent warlock in the city,” she went on. “Trappers never go after someone who’ll be missed—at least not right away. They usually stick to loners, the newly turned, people leaving town. And somebody’s going to notice that a High Warlock suddenly up and disappeared.”

“It’s more than that,” Samir added, shifting uncomfortable beneath Sage. “Trappers stick to the nobodies, because that’s all they can handled. You don’t have to be a shadowhunter to a pen a lone werewolf or a cage a lost pixie. But a High Warlock? That takes some serious fire power. I know I couldn’t take one down without using a shit-ton of energy. And that’s _after_ using a trick or six to even the playing field.”

“Same,” Sage concurred, rare solemnity shading her tone. “And in this case, we are talking about Magnus Bane. He’s over three hundred years old. He helped invent the portal. He’s the summoner of choice if you want to raise a denizen of Hell. What trapper has the balls, let the alone the power, to catch him?”

“Fenslage.” Jang-mi, posed demurely between Brielle and Danny on the suede couch, had spoken quietly, her volume no louder than drizzle tapping on a windowpane, but her voice resounded like a cannon fired off a mountainside.

“The Fenslage clan,” she said again, her foxtails, all nine, quivering. “They do.” _Fenslage_. The name was seldom said aloud in O’Keefe Place, and when it was, it was whispered harshly under a shaky breath. Fenslage—the most formidable trappers in the city. Fenslage—enslavers of many a poor, unsuspecting Downworlder. Fenslage—the reason Jang-mi was the very last of her kind.

“The Fenslage,” Danny murmured tepidly, glancing pityingly at Jang-mi, “yes, if there’s a mundane that could take on a High Warlock and win, it’s one of them.” 

“The Fenslage aren’t stupid, though,” Brielle disagreed. “The trapping industry survives, because most people don’t even know it exists. Like Sage and Samir said, weaklings are the choice of quarry, because no one gives a damn about them. They’ll be taken for dead and forgotten. Attention is bad for business. And going after a High Warlock? Making deals with the Circle? That’s going to get someone’s attention. And not just anyone’s attention—the _Clave’s_ attention. The Fenslage might be shitheads, but they’re smart shitheads, and they know better.”

“Then,” Noelle replied, “does that mean there’s new trapper company out there? One on the same level as the Fenslage clan—if not more powerful—but reckless enough to risk exposure? Power and recklessness—that’s a deadly combination.” 

She was perched beside Simon on a velvety loveseat, and her shoulder bumped into his as she reached behind her neck for her braid, which she began to fiddle with nervously. She bit her lip, pike teeth peeking over pink flesh, as her doe eyes darkened. Simon knew that look well—that poltergeist of shame. He saw it gloating every morning in the bathroom mirror. He placed a hand on Noelle’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. Her eyes brightened a fraction, but the smile she offered him hid her teeth and thus seemed hollow and forced.

“If that’s the case,” Sage conjectured, “then the trouble’s just getting started.” They all passed looks of trepidation, but no one uttered a sound, their mouths too full of disquieting questions and speculations. The ones on Simon’s tongue were hard to swallow. _How’s Leilani a part of all of this? And is she just a part of the mystery? Or…is she the key? Why doesn’t she just tell us? …Why doesn’t she tell me?_

The door to the sitting room opened, and Felix stepped over the threshold. With his index and pointer fingers, he pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. His hazel-green eyes alighted to Simon.

“Leilani is asking for you,” he announced. He watched pensively, as Simon stood and shuffled over, and before he stepped out of the doorway, he adjusted his glasses again and leaned into Simon’s air.

“Don’t feel so aggrieved, Simon,” Felix murmured. “Whatever her secrets, she keeps them for good reason.”


	5. Part I, Chapter 5: Apple of Discord

In Leilani’s room, it was eternally spring. Blooms and green were everywhere Simon’s eye touched—sweet asslyum carpeting the dark wood floorboards, jasmine and vine climbing the legs of a vanity dresser, curtains of honeysuckle shading the windows, wisteria scaling the ivory walls, fuchsia hanging from a crystal chandelier, a miniature meadow of dahlias and peonies surrounding a vintage armoire, potted gardenia and lilies adorning bedside tables. Loveliest of all, the canopy of Leilani’s bed was composed of cherry blossom boughs, their fragile flowers fluttering and falling in a floral sprinkle. The floor around the bed was perpetually dusted with soft pink, but the lacy, pearl white duvet somehow always remained perfectly pristine. 

Magnus, too, was free of petals. Motionless, he was tucked into the satin sheets, and his sleeping face, wiped clean of blood and dirt, seemed so young. So vulnerable. Simon padded closer, trying futilely to protect the delicate white flowers from his weight, and, nearing the bed, he could see the collar of plaid flannel pajamas peeking out from under the duvet around Magnus’ neck. Simon couldn’t up but chuckle as he stretched out a hand to flatten an upturn corner. Plaid pajamas—predictable. Plebian.

“Not your style at all,” he murmured. 

“Felix summoned them. He said they’re very warm and comfortable.” Soundlessly, Leilani had appeared on the other side of the bed. She had changed out of her sweater dress, ruined with stains of Magnus’ blood, and was now wearing a gauzy dress of lavender blue that draped over her curves in Grecian folds. Under the crown of cherry blossoms, she was breathtakingly ethereal, like a springtime goddess that had never known the sting of frost.

“Magnus is the fashion-over-practicality type,” Simon said, pulling his hand back. “He wears glitter with everything—and I mean _everything_.” A ghost of a smile possessing her lips, Leilani leaned against a bedpost, the trunk of one of four cherry trees growing at each of the bed’s corners. 

“Were you close?” she asked.

“No, not really,” he replied mutedly. “But…he was always there when it counted. He showed up for me…even when I didn’t show up for myself….”

“Those are the best of companions,” Leilani said. “Those who carry us when we prefer to be left behind. Who love when love is hard and promises no reward.”

“Leilani, what’s going on?” Simon demanded suddenly. “What’s happened to Magnus?” Leilani’s amber shimmered apologetically.

“Not ‘happened,’ Simon. ‘Happening.’”

“What?” he squawked. “Happening? It’s still happening? _Damn_ it, Leilani. _What_ the hell is happening? What?” He didn’t mean to curse. Didn’t mean for his features to twist into the hideous snarl of fangs vampires make amidst battle. But Leilani’s vagueness was infuriating, and the distance between them felt bigger than the width of the bed.

“Simon,” she sighed, closing her eyes, “my people…they have their laws like any other people. They’re old laws, as ancient as earth and fire. And those laws say that every word I say in this moment is one word too many. Those laws…they wouldn’t punish me for telling. But they’ll hurt you for being told.” _Whatever her secrets, she keeps them for good reason._ Of course, Simon berated himself silently. Of course, her secrecy was about protecting him. When had she ever made a move that wasn’t propelled by concern for another?

“Yet, I know how clandestineness can be like an apple of discord,” she went on. She opened her eyes slowly, and they flashed a myriad of purples in the mellow light. “—and I never want to quarrel with you, Simon.”

“Then,” Simon said, exhaling, “tell me what you can. Tell me how we help Magnus and get him home.”

“I must finish what was started,” she answered. Pushing off the trunk of the cherry tree, she sat down elegantly on the edge of the bed and extended a cinnamon brown arm until her fingertips landed on Magnus’ leg. “The villain that the Nephilim spoke of—Valentine—has somehow come into possession of something that is…imbued with a piece of me. And with it, he has tried to perform a ritual that my people haven’t done in nearly a thousand years.”

“Why?” Simon queried.

“Because,” Leilani said, an abrupt hush overtaking her voice, “playing God invites the devil in. That is how Greater Demons lost their wings and became what they are.” Simon’s eyes darted frantically to Magnus’ face, so still and unsuspecting.

“Magnus—”

“—has not been harmed,” Leilani assured. “It is Valentine who’ll have to answer for commandeering Heaven’s purview, not Magnus. He is not unaffected, but what happening is to him is supposed to be a gift. The greatest of gifts. If the ritual had been done properly, it would be a momentously joyous day. But Valentine undoubtedly seeks to pervert this gift. And he clearly doesn’t understand the ritual’s true purpose, or he wouldn’t have forgotten its most important element.”

“Most important element?” Simon repeated. “What’s that?” Leilani retracted her arm and rested both of her hands in her lap.

“The presence of _conpar_ ,” Leilani explained. “The presence of love. The epic, forever kind of love.” She gave Simon a glimpse of a grin, and, remembering their earlier conversation, he connected the dots.

“You mean Alec,” he deduced. Leilani nodded.

“To complete the ritual, I need something of his,” she said. “It can’t just be anything. It must be a treasured possession. Something that is nearly a part of him.” Simon’s mind didn’t even need a minute to mull over Leilani’s requirements.

“His bow and arrow,” he said instantly. “The dude practically sleeps with them.”

“That will do. That will do just fine. Now, the question is, how do we get them? Contacting Alec directly is too dangerous. Valentine is looking for Magnus, so he’ll have eyes on those close to him. But I’ll need the bow and arrow within a week. That’s when the window for the ritual closes. And if that happens...Magnus won’t wake up until it can be performed again.”

“And…when’s that?” Simon asked, though the flip-flops his stomach was doing warned him that he wouldn’t like the answer. The dull shade of topaz that iced over Leilani’s eyes concurred.

“In a hundred years.” A chill descended over Simon like an avalanche. 

“In a hundred years? You mean like Sleeping Beauty?”

“I mean exactly like Sleeping Beauty,” Leilani said. “Talia Rose was a real girl, and she suffered a most lamentable fate.” _All the legends are true_ Jace had once smugly told him. Simon was still learning how true that was.

“I’ll get them,” Simon resolved. “Alec’s bow and arrow—I’ll get them.”

“Simon,” Leilani cried, “I’d never ask you to do that. I would never ask you to…” She trailed off, but all that she didn’t say hung in the air with the perfumes of innumerable blooms. _I’d never ask you to go back. To go back and face what—who—you left behind._

“I know,” Simon said. “But it’s Magnus’ best shot, and I owe him big time. So it’s my turn. It’s my turn to show up for him.”

“…very well,” Leilani conceded. Rising from the bed, she moved around the cherry tree, her bare feet leaving no indentation in the mix of pink petals and sweet asslyum. Simon met her halfway at the foot of the bed. He didn’t need to look behind him to know that he had left glaring, carter footprints.

“If you can,” Leilani entreated, “please leave this in the place of the bow and arrow for Alec.” She cupped her hands in front her, and, in the cradle of her palms, a lilac glow budded and burgeoned before bursting into the silhouette of a bloom. When the glow faded, a rose, white fringed with pink that deepened to red at the petals’ very edges, sat squarely in Leilani’s hands.

“A rose?” Simon said, knitting his eyebrows.

“My people call it the Vow Rose,” she elucidated. “White for remembrance. Pink for passion. Red for love. It can be tuned to a union of souls, and I have that done for Magnus and his _conpar_. When Alec holds it, he’ll be able to feel what Magnus feels. He’ll know Magnus is all right. I hope it will ease their separation, even if just a little.” 

With the utmost care, Simon reached for the rose with both hands, and his calloused fingers slid against her supple skin. For a moment, they stood like that, hands conjoined around the Vow Rose, their gazes melding together like the trio of colors in the bloom they held. Leilani’s honey amber, speckled with glittering amethyst, would stay in the eye of Simon’s mind long after she let him go.

“I’m coming with you,” Noelle proclaimed as she hopped into the passenger seat of the old gray Accord. She had dressed for the weather, which had turned ferociously cold overnight, and in her blush pink stocking hat, topped with a peppy pom-pom, she had the moving look of a young girl—an aura of innocence that pulled you in and invoked an irresistible, compulsive desire to protect. But then she smiled, unveiling her needlepoint pike teeth, and the incongruity sunk in half a beat too late. If she wanted to, Noelle could’ve had the taste of flesh on her tongue before it was clear just who needed protecting. Fortunately for all, Noelle was a vegetarian of sorts, and like Simon, abstained from the baser instinct that hungered for human meat. Her smile, though unsettling, never held any real malice.

“Noelle,” Simon said as he slid the key into the ignition, “thanks, but I don’t need any help—”

“Yes, you do,” Noelle disagreed simply. She secured her seatbelt with a resolute click and then turned her pecan brown eyes to Simon expectedly. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils.

“Noelle,” he exhaled slowly, “I appreciate the offer, really, but my plan—”

“—is risky,” Noelle said perkily. “Stupid risky. Samir told me all about it. Tricking the Manhattan clan—you do realize how horribly wrong that could go, right? Especially since you’re using Samir’s little terrors to do it.”

“You of all people know effective Samir’s…pets can be,” Simon said coolly. Noelle tossed him a scowl.

“Those monsters are not pets—they’re minions. And terrible minions at that. Samir can barely control them, and him telling them to obey you does little good. They live to sabotage, not serve.” A muffled chorus of delighted shrieks sprung from the dashboard, where a black lacquered box enameled all over with gold Arabic scroll sat. The box started to tremble as mischievous trills grew louder and more impatient, forcing Simon to slap the lid a couple times with his palm.

“Wait, ladies,” Simon ordered. “You’ll get to go to town soon enough.” With this assurance, the box went silent and stilled, but Noelle cast a distrusting glare over it.

“Are you sure,” she said, crossing her arms, “that you want to sick them onto Hotel DuMort? Your old home?”

“It was never my home,” Simon snapped, unable to keep well-aged bitterness from souring his tone.

“But someone from there is your sire, right?” Noelle asked gingerly as she unlaced her arms. “I heard you mention that once to Leilani.” Simon’s gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“Sire?” he repeated, chuckling mirthlessly. “I’m not sure I ever had one of those. I mean, I have one, of course, technically speaking—Camille. But she never intended to make me her fledging. I was just a moment of indulgence for her. It was Raphael who buried me and made sure I turned. And he only did that because—” Clary’s teary, bottle green gaze rammed into his mind, cutting off the rest of his sentence at the pass. He wilted like a morning glory in the clutches of darkness, his forehead falling against the cold leather of the wheel.

“There is no love lost,” he said finally, “between me and the Manhattan Clan. I was never one of them. Not really.”

“Then why ask Jang-mi for a glamour?” Noelle replied. “If they mean nothing to you, and you nothing to them, what does it matter if they recognize you or not?” Lifting his head, Simon caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror. The pale blue eyes of a stranger’s face stared back. 

“Leilani thinks the Circle is watching people close to Magnus,” Simon explained. “It’s no secret that Raphael and Magnus are friends, so he might be under surveillance too. If he is, it’s better that the Circle thinks I’m some random Downworlder making a play for Raphael’s territory. If I’m recognized, it could cause more problems than we already got.” 

Noelle levelled her sympathetic stare at Simon, pecan brown eyes trapezing the sharp plains of his mask. Did she sense that Simon had spoken in partial truths? Did she somehow know that the Circle was the least of his worries? That he did care if Raphael saw the real him—and chose to share that news?

“Well,” Noelle, after a moment, sighed with rejuvenated merriment, “I’m still coming with you.”

“Noelle, it’s better if I do this alone—”

“Simon,” Noelle cut in as she turned her eyes forward, “trust me on this. When you go back to what used to be your world and see that your world went on without you, the last thing you want is to be alone. When you are standing on the fringes…it can be the most painful thing you’ve ever seen.”

“Noelle—”

“Drive, Simon.” 

Nothing else was said, as Simon’s right hand dropped from the wheel to the key in the ignition. His fingers turned it with a quick twist of the wrist, and the car grumbled to life, the engine griping like an old man who had been awoken from a nap. In the windshield, Noelle’s reflection looked like her usual happy-go-lucky self, all apple-cheeked grin and gleaming teeth. The incongruity of her dim eyes sunk in half a beat too late.


	6. Part I, Chapter 6: Song of a Siren

Simon and Noelle were not Hotel DuMort’s first guests of the day. That was clear from the state of its side door, blasted clean off its hinges and lying in fat splinters like the broken bones of a skeleton. Hedging around the pieces precariously, they scanned the decrepit hallway with hawk eyes but saw nothing except for peeling wallpaper and a thick layer of dust. _Wait_ , Simon reconsidered, stepping closer, _not dust_.

“Oh no,” Noelle gasped. She bent down and picked up something sparkly with her long fingers. When she held up, Simon realized it was a tassel diamond earring, its tiny gems tarnished with splotches of bright, shimmering red.

“Vampire blood,” Noelle said, glancing at the ashes scattered across the worn, dingy carpet. “She must have been cut with the tip of the stake before it found her heart. And she’s probably been dead for hours. The blood’s completely dry.” She laid the earring back onto the floor as tenderly as she might have closed the eyes of the dead girl if there had been a body left to tend to.

“The Circle,” Simon growled. “They had the same idea as us—showed up during the day and caught the clan off guard.” He shifted the lacquered box from his hands to under his arm, so he could get a good look at his watch. “It’s only a little after ten, which means they had to have attacked right after dawn.” 

“What do we do now, Simon?” Noelle asked, standing. “The clan…at dawn, they would’ve had nowhere to go…they were trapped. So chances are good that…that they’re all…” She glanced again at the soot stain.

“We search for survivors,” Simon answered. “If there’s anyone left, maybe they can tell us what the Circle is up to.” 

Noelle’s lips twisted into a tight frown, but she followed Simon’s lead down the hallway and into an open, unfinished space. Its plywood walls, painted an unassuming apple red, were only half-finished, wiring spilling out here and there like exposed entrails, and its ceiling had no tiles to hide its metal support beams, which, cold and bare, stretched overhead like the skeletal fingers of tree limbs in winter. Noelle cocked a finely sculpted eyebrow.

“This,” she said, “is where the most terrifying vampire clan in New York lives? The backway looks like the ghost of the 1920’s, and the front lobby is a construction zone.” Chuckling, Simon walked toward a set of double doors, nearly camouflaged to match the rest of the décor—nearly. A busted padlock betrayed it.

“Hotel DuMort was originally built in the twenties,” Simon explained as he ran his fingers across the broken lock. “When the Great Depression hit, mundanes abandoned it, and vampires took over. They…renovate the outside every now and then to keep mundanes from getting too curious. Right now, it looks like the building is being converted into condominiums by the DuMort Construction Company. There’s even banner that says, ‘live your way now and _forever_.”

“Cute,” Noelle snorted. “I’m sure people are just _dying_ to get in.” 

“Hilarious,” Simon replied grimly. 

“Sorry,” she apologized, sighing contritely. “That was bad taste. Especially considering what we’re about to walk into.”

“It’s okay,” he dismissed. He splayed his hand against the door. “You ready?” Noelle curled her lips up and back, purposely unsheathing her needle teeth, and up close, Simon saw that they more closely resembled a piranha’s tines than a pike’s. They were pointy, triangular pearls, neatly arranged in a straight, carnivorous row.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Are you?” _Am I?_ Simon thought briefly. _Am I ready for this?_ Because, he knew abruptly, Noelle had been right. This was more than just braving the vampire lair or chancing a fight with the Circle. This was stepping back into a world that was once his—once his everything—but had left him a terrible, monstrous parody of who he used to be. No. No, he was not ready. He’d never be ready. But he could not run. Not again. But at least this time around, he was not alone. A wave of gratitude crashing into him, Simon let his fangs descend.

“Let’s go.”

Simon had recalled the true Hotel DuMort as a sleek blending of ancient art and modern extravagance—Roman busts juxtaposed with leather coaches, Renaissance paintings posted above steel chrome tables, Ming vases accenting a large flat screen TV. But now those careful combinations had been destroyed: busts reduced to marble rumble, leather furnishing shredded to scraps, paintings turned to pulp and strewn over toppled tables, vases and TV both smashed beyond repair. And everywhere dark ashy stains interspersed with bright, shimmering scarlet.

“Oh my God!” Noelle cried hoarsely. “ _Oh_ …those poor souls…”

“Damn it,” Simon hissed. “… _Damn it_!” A flare of rage had him dropping Samir’s box and jetting up a spiral staircase to the private quarters. He wasn’t expecting to find any of his former clan alive—there’s no amount of delusion that could outweigh the glaring evidence of a massacre. He was only hoping to find a stray Circle member who might be lingering to revel in their gory victory. If there would be no rescue, then there would be vengeance. Someone had to pay. His blood—his sire’s blood—demanded it. 

So the sudden sight of a slumped figure bound to a chair jolted Simon like an electric shock. He had almost missed it in his frenzied rush, but when a strained groan pricked his eardrums, he doubled back and zoomed into a spacious office that had been tossed and demolished like the rest of the lair. Only the young man in the chair remained halfway intact but barely so. The silver chain bindings had carved bracelets of blood into his pale wrists, and his suit jacket, which might originally have been a handsome Armani brocade, was ripped with a dozen holes, each bordered by a dark, glimmering crimson circle. Whining, the man managed to throw back his head, and Simon nearly fell as he stumbled backward.

“Ra-Raphael?” Hearing his name, Raphael pried open his eyes, and the glassy brown orbs pinned Simon in place.

“…I told…you,” Raphael rasped. “I’m…not tel-ling…you…any-thing…so..go a-head…Kill…m-e…”

“Raphael, it’s me,” Simon said, regaining his footing. It’s—” There was crunch beneath his sneaker, and looking down, Simon saw his reflection in the splinters of a mirror shard. _Oh, right,_ he remembered, _the glamour_. Raphael wasn’t seeing Simon. He was staring at stranger whose visage boasted dramatic, elfin features and eyes as frigid as the artic sky.

“Simon, there you are! I think we should go. There’s no one left—” Noelle’s fretting faded, as she edged into the room, her breath hitching when Raphael, lolling his head to the right, fixated on her. He grinned, his teeth outlined in pale, runny red.

“ _Bonita_ ,” he grunted. “ _Que muerta bonita_.” In an instant, Noelle crossed the room, and, bending over, she enclosed her teeth around the silver chain cutting into Raphael’s left wrist, bit down, and yanked her jaw up. The chain snapped apart as easily as a twig.

“He’s Raphael Santiago,” Simon said, as Noelle moved onto the other wrist. “He’s the leader of the clan.” Noelle pulled the second chain from her mouth and shucked it to the floor.

“They tortured him,” she muttered, cupping Raphael’s clammy cheek. “Stabbed him over and over with a stake but deliberately missed his heart.”

“I think they were trying to get information,” Simon deduced, “probably about Magnus.” Immediately, Raphael snarled, his fangs on full displayed. He tried to push himself out of the chair, but his arms wobbled and gave out, and he collapsed back down in an exhausted heap.

“What…do you…want with…Magnus?” Raphael growled. “What…have y-o-u…done…to…h-him?” 

“Shh,” Noelle urged gently. “We don’t want to hurt your friend. We only want to help. But, right now, we need to take care of you first.” She lifted her wrist to Raphael’s lips, and, nostrils flaring, he sniffed, once, twice, and then abruptly sunk his fangs into Noelle’s dark java brown skin. 

“Noelle!” Simon exclaimed. “Noelle, what are you doing!”

“He’ll die, Simon,” she said, wincing slightly as Raphael sucked ravenously. “If he’s completely drained of blood, he’ll die, so he needs to feed to replenish what he’s lost.”

“What about you?” Simon said anxiously. “First of all, what if he drains you? Second, vampire venom is really, super addictive. Seriously, they make drugs out of the stuff. It’s called—”

“Yin fen,” Noelle finished. “I know, and don’t worry. There are lot of poisonous creatures under the sea, not to mention the hordes of venomous sea demons that lurk in the depths. Over the centuries, we selkies developed an immunity to venoms of all kinds in order to survive. Our own venom acts a very powerful counteragent, so vampire venom doesn’t really do much for me. Plus, our venom also doubles as a rather potent sedative, so when we are bitten—” As if on cue, Raphael went lax, slumping once more in his seat, and Noelle gingerly pulled her wrist free from his fangs.

“We are very tasty,” she said, a tad smugly, “but you’ll never stay awake long enough to make a full meal of us. My blood will keep him alive, but he’ll need to feed properly once he wakes up.”

“Note to self,” Simon muttered, “Noelle does not make for a great midnight snack.” Noelle smirked fleetingly, but her forehead wrinkled with concern, as she inspected Raphael’s hair, matted with sweat and dried blood.

“Something doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why did they leave him alive? If he gave up nothing after being tortured so brutally, he would’ve been useless to them. So why let him live when they killed everybody else?”

“Because the others weren’t worth the dirt they crawled out of,” a voice sneered. “But that one—he’s pretty enough. And that he used to be a clan leader adds to his value. I can make a nice tiny sum off of him.” Through the doorway came two men, both dressed in army green trench coats fastened with—oddly, Simon thought passingly—lyre shaped buttons. One, heavy set, looked to be in his early thirties and was completely bald, all of his hair seemingly reserved for his lengthy, coarse gray-blonde beard. The other was at least a decade younger, clean-shaven and spindly, with stringy, flaxen hair that hung about an inch past his ears. In his hand, he clutched several loops of silver chain.

“Trappers,” Simon hissed under his breath. 

“Interesting,” the bald trapper drawled. “The vamps, like most of you supernatural stock, didn’t have a clue about who we are or what we do. But you two…interesting, indeed.”

“The female’s some kind of fey,” the younger trapper theorized. “But the male… They came here during the day, so he’s obviously not a bloodsucker, but that’s all I’m sure of. He might be a were…”

“I love it when people talk about me like I’m not here,” Simon said lowly. “It puts me in such a chummy mood.”

"Mouthy, are we?” baldy replied. “Well, that can be trained out of your system—with the proper tools.”

“And if all else fails,” added string-bean,” we can always remove the tongue.” Simon would’ve lunged for the jugular right then and there, but Noelle’s hand on his shoulder was a tempering touch.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “They came prepared to fight vampires, and they took out an entire clan in a matter of hours. If they find out what you are, they won’t give up until you’re on the auction block. Besides, they came here looking for Magnus. They might be the same trappers who turned him over to the Circle in the first place. That makes them powerful and reckless. It’s a dea—”

“—deadly combination,” Simon recollected aloud. “But the only way out of here is through them. If we don’t fight, we might as well as put the collars around our necks ourselves.”

“Do you remember when we first met?” she asked suddenly. “On the riverfront? Do you the feeling of disgust? When you realized that I’m a monster—”

“You’re _not_ a monster,” Simon argued hurriedly. “I was surprised, yeah, but—”

“It’s okay, Simon,” Noelle said, smiling sadly. “I know what I am. I just need you to remember what I am too.” Saying nothing more, she released her grip on his windbreaker and turned to Raphael, cupping his head between her palms. She then leaned down and promptly pressed her lips against his. Simon balked, as the elder trapper started to laugh.

“Ho, ho, _ho_!” he snickered. “So _that’s_ how it is. No need to kiss him farewell, sweet pea. You and he won’t be separated. A mated pair fetch far a higher price together than alone. Owners like knowing that their pets won’t be lonely while they’re gone.”

“That wasn’t a goodbye,” Noelle corrected, as she let go of Raphael. “It was a seal of protection.”

“Seal of protection?” repeated the slim trapper incredulously. “From us?”

“No,” Noelle hummed. She swiveled on her heel with a sudden sensuality in her hips, and she slinked toward the trappers with a memorizing sway. The brown and pupils of her eyes swirled together, dissipating into a blue-black nothingness—the color of a tempest at sea. “From _me_.”

Then, she opened her mouth and began to sing.

The siren song possessed no words. Only notes that rose and rolled into a symphony of feeling. Of longing that grabbed you by the throat and dragged you under far below beyond sense and reason. Simon flayed to stay afloat, only Noelle’s warning keeping him buoyed amidst the spell of her voice. _Remember what I am._

Meanwhile, the bald trapper broke first. He reached out a trembling hand, as his beady eyes frosted over like those of a starving man.

“Me,” he pleaded wildly. “Choose me! Take me! Please—”

“No!” screeched the greasy-haired boy. He flung his silver chain around his partner’s neck and, looping into a makeshift noose, yanked up and hard. The man’s meaty fingers scrambled frantically to loosen the vice, which only provoked the boy to pull tighter.

“No!” stringbean howled again. “Me! Pick me! I’m the worthy one!” Baldy abandoned his attempts to slacken the noose. Instead, he reached inside his trench coat, and, with expert aim, he threw his arm across his chest and over his shoulder, a long stake in his fat fist. The sharpened point drilled into stringbean’s eye socket, blood and eyeball exploding like a smashed jelly packet. The boy screamed, dropping the chain to clutch his face.

Noelle sang on.

Heaving, Baldy hit his knees. He coughed violently but still managed to find the breath needed to fuel a sloth crawl toward Noelle. His sausage fingers grazed the tan toe of her boots, and he started to cackle frenetically.

“Me!” he cried. “It’s me! It’s me! Oh, beautiful maiden, it is I! Pick me! Me! Please, maiden! I am worthy! I am worthy!” He started to tilt his head back, lifting his chin so he could look up at Noelle, and the angle was just the perfect degree for cranium, tongue, and jaw to be speared in one fluid strike. He faceplanted into carpet and broken glass, as Stringbean extracted the stake and watched him fall with his one good eye. The other was a black, bleeding pit—a hideous hole in his humanity. He grinned.

“No one,” he said, sitting back on his haunches, “will adore you, maiden, as I do. _I_ alone am worthy. And here is the proof.” With both hands, he raised the stake, dripping profusely with wet red, and held it high with ceremonial flair. Then he, beaming as wide as the most devoted of acolytes, drove it down, brushing past a lyre-button, and promptly pierced his own heart. He keeled over and died just like that, his depraved smile never fading.

The siren song ended in a wail—a low, lamenting whine of triumph.

It took a moment for Simon to find his land legs, and by the time he recovered his balance, Noelle’s eyes had returned to a pretty pecan, which she had cast almost pityingly over the mutilated trappers.

“Powerful and reckless,” she sighed, “always a deadly combination.”

“Noelle,” Simon said, though unsure on how to continue. Chortling wryly, Noelle wrapped herself up in a tight hug.

“When I was a child,” she started thickly, “I didn’t know. What I am. I washed up on the Maine coast as a baby. A preacher and his wife—the Clarksons—found me. They thought I was a miracle—a gift from God. They had prayed so long for a baby, you see, and it was Christmas morning that day. ‘A Christmas miracle,’ my mom used tell me. ‘You’re our Christmas miracle.’ That’s why we named you ‘Noelle.’ I used to love that story. And I loved my parents. But I am not so sure that they loved me in the end.”

“Noelle,” Simon said again. “I am sure they did.”

“You’re sweet, Simon,” Noelle replied sadly. “But there’s no need to patronize me. I remember the look on my mother’s face when she saw what her little ‘Christmas Miracle’ was capable of. I was thirteen, and it was the parish’s Christmas concert. Normally, it would’ve been held at the church, but they were renovating that year, so it was held in the school gym. I was so scared—I had never sung outside of the church before. My mother kept telling I would be fine. That my voice was meant to praise God. That it was a sin to hide my light under a basket.”

“You didn’t know, Noelle,” Simon insisted. He looked down at the trappers. A large pool of crimson had started to form between the two bodies. “How could you have possibly known?”

“Instinct,” Noelle replied readily. “I could feel it in my blood—my killer instinct. I’d never felt more alive than when I stepped up to the mic and looked out into the crowd. I could feel my whole body throbbing with power, and it _exhilarate_ d me. At the time, I told myself it was confidence. Joy. But looking back, it was so clear. So stupidly clear. I knew that I shouldn’t have. I knew. But I did. I sang. And, well, you can probably guess what happened.”

And Simon could. He could see the gym plunged into pandemonium. The students and parishioners battling to prove their devotion, one-upping each other with feats more murderous than next. He could see little Noelle, singing in the middle of it all a song as old and primal as the sea.

“I would’ve sang until they were all dead,” Noelle went on, “if it hadn’t been for my mother’s scream. Oh, the way she screamed. The way she _looked_ at me. Like I was the devil come. And that’s when I knew. That’s when I knew what I was.” Noelle hugged herself closer.

“After that, I was all instinct. I ran home for my baby blanket—the blanket my parents had found me in. Then I went to the shore, which should’ve felt strange, because I had always been terrified of the ocean. Of the pull it had over me. But it felt perfectly natural to walk into the water—to dive right in and watch the blanket become a tail. I walked into the water and became what I had always been.”

Noelle’s arms fell to her side, as she turned to Simon, pecan eyes sweetly ruefully. Her smile was small and toothless.

“After drifting for a year, I met an old warlock who lived in a lighthouse on this small island just north of Eastport. She had lived long enough to remember when the seas had been ruled by selkies, and she explained to me the in’s and out’s of my…abilities. That, unlike your garden variety mermaid, my voice remains deadly on land, except for on hallow ground, which was why my singing never caused harm inside my father’s church. My mother had been right about one thing—my voice is meant to praise God.

So, I went back. It is a Sunday, and I arrived just as Mass was letting out. I saw my parents. They looked so normal. So _happy_. They had gone without me. My world had gone without me.” She paused, her breath snagging on a choked back sob. Her eyes darted away, but Simon saw the diamond sheen that glossed them over.

“It’s better,” she pushed out hoarsely. “It’s better that they did. The warlock told me, ‘You selkies are like tidal waves. You hit the land hard and leave it utterly wrecked.’ So, that Sunday, after everyone had left, I went into that church and sang. I sang until my throat hurt. And then, before God, I made two promises. One—never to sing again unless in praise of Him. Two—never…ever…to return to my parents’ shore. I couldn’t keep the first. But I’ll die a thousand times over before I break the second.”

More oceans welled in her eyes, but she wiped away quickly before the dam could fail. Her pecan stare, snapping back to Simon, sparkled with a convincing show of can-do spirit. 

“Enough of that,” she said as she suppressed a sniffle. “We have more pressing problems—like what to do now. The Manhattan clan was central to the plan, but clearly that’s not going to work. We need a new plan.”

“Uh,” Simon mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. He didn’t want to move on to the next like Noelle hadn’t just stripped her soul naked in front him. But she wasn’t wrong. There was a more immediate crisis, and Noelle was very obviously done with show-and-tell for the day. Briefly, he wished Leilani was here. She would know how to rub balm over Noelle’s scars in the simplest of words. 

“Well,” he said instead, “first, we need to get Raphael out of here. Trappers are like roaches. Where’s there’s two, there’s twelve. Someone’s going to come looking for Baldy and Stringbean, and we don’t want to be here when they do. Once we get Raphael to a safe place, we can go home and re-group.”

“Where’s a safe place?” Noelle questioned. “I mean, not to be a Debbie Downer, but it’s not just the Circle we have to watch out for now. Trappers are persistent pests. Where the Circle doesn’t look, they will. And, unless you willing to tell Raphael who you really are, home’s out. Jang-mi’s glamours are great, but one wrong move and ‘poof’—you’re you. It’s too big of a risk. Besides, if we bring back another bird with a broken wing, Eshana will explode. She’s already beside herself playing nursemaid to Magnus.” She looked over her shoulder back at Raphael, unconscious and unmoving. “Leaving him with her would be like throwing a lamb to the wolves.” Simon’s mind suddenly seized upon an idea. _Wolves_.

“Call Felix,” he instructed. “Tell him we need to make a portal.”

“A portal?” Noelle said, brow crinkling. “To where?” Simon smirked.

“To the one place where no one would think to go looking for a vampire.”


	7. Part I, Chapter 7: Leader of the Pack

“I see no less than seven health code violations,” Felix murmured carefully. The burnt sugar smell of magic salted the air, the portal having closed seconds before. He, Noelle, and Simon, half-carrying Raphael, were standing in the back room of the Jade Wolf, just beyond the grimy, gray kitchen, from which the odor of something long past its expiration date drifted.

“What did you expect?” Simon scoffed. “It’s a werewolf den, not a fine dining establishment.”

“Clearly.”

“Are you sure this a good idea, Simon?” asked Noelle uneasily. She was holding Samir’s black and gold box the way people hold dead animals or bombs—farthest away from her person as possible and with the fewest fingers needed—and she was squinting at it accusingly for both misdeeds done and still to come. “I know you and Sage get along alright, but most vampires and werewolves don’t exactly play nice together.”

“I believe their current relationship status is ‘mortal enemies,’” Felix tacked on. His lips quirked up into a nostalgic smile. “That feud earned me my first fortune.”

“Glad to see that you can see the silver lining in centuries of hate and bloodshed,” Simon muttered before he turned to Noelle. “Don’t worry. Luke’s a good guy. He might not like Raphael, but he never turns away someone who needs help. He was always there for me, and that didn’t change when I turned.”

“Graymark does have a very firm reputation of being fair and cool-headed,” Felix added. He glanced at Simon over his rims and then slid his glasses up the incline of his nose. Simon had come to associate this gesture with Felix’s otherwise imperceptible digging into another’s head. Into another’s soul. It was a grating habit of Felix’s, pawing at people’s memories and scars out of mere curiosity, and Simon couldn’t help but be on edge around him, not that his mental shields could keep Felix out. But they did make it clear when and where Felix wasn’t welcome, and, bemused, Felix shifted his probe to Noelle, too engrossed in worry and nerves to prevent the intrusion. 

“You kissed him?” he said to her, his wings ruffling in surprise. “Your first kiss? You gave it to the vampire?” Noelle’s shoulders stiffened.

“So what if I did!” she bit back. “Desperate times, desperate measures! I-I am going to make sure someone’s here. We’re not leaving Raphael here alone.” She scurried away, disappearing into the culinary gloom.

“So she kissed him. What’s the big deal?” Simon asked, as he lowered Raphael down into a chair. Like most of the Jade Wolf, it had seen better days and had lost most of its coloring and cotton stuffing over the years. Now, it was a chair in only the most utilitarian sense, and it groaned in weak protest as Raphael’s weight settled in it. “She said she had to do it in order to protect Raphael from her voice.” Felix rested his chin against his curled knuckles ponderingly.

“The big deal is,” Felix explained, “that only a selkie’s _first_ kiss protects someone from the power of the selkie’s voice. It’s the one detail the stories have never gotten right—the significance of that life-saving kiss. So precious is it that selkies save it for someone…special. To be impetuous about it typically leads to tragedy for the selkie—that much Christian Andersen _did_ get right. But to think…Noelle gave him such a gift simply because he was the first to call her beautiful.”

“Raphael is not the first to tell Noelle she’s pretty,” Simon said incredulously. “Just last week, the barista at Starbucks told her that she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.” Simon couldn’t comprehend how Felix had forgotten that particular coffee run, because the barista had followed up that benign compliment with a graphic proposition that Brielle turned down on Noelle’s behalf by hurling her caramel mocha into the barista’s leer.

“He is the first,” Felix said. “The first who saw her for what she is and still called her beautiful anyway.” 

“He called her a ‘beautiful death!’” Simon, exasperated, replied. “That’s not calling her beautiful! Not really! At best, it’s some kind of twisted, backhanded compliment—” His rant perished, as Noelle returned in full sprint. Her eyes were swollen with ill omen. 

“Noelle?” Simon said anxiously. “What happened? Is someone out there?”

“They’re all out there,” she answered breathlessly. “The whole pack.”

“Are you worried that someone saw you?” Felix asked. “Don’t be. No one can see through my invisibility glamours.”

“It’s not that,” Noelle dismissed quickly. “The whole pack is out there. But they’re not alone.” She paused, inhaling. 

“…Someone is challenging the alpha,” she exhaled, “and the challenger…it's Joshua.” Felix’s lax expression morphed into a hard, razor-sharp scowl—a sword slowly unsheathed from its harmless holster.

“Who?” Simon peeped. “Who’s Joshua?”

“Joshua Begay,” Noelle murmured. She was speaking to Simon, but her eyes swept to Felix. “He’s a coyote shifter—a rare Unseelie bloodline. He used to live at O’Keefe’s Place. But, a few months before you moved in, he was…evicted.”

“Evicted? Why?”

“Because he’s a loathsome, treacherous creature,” Felix said. His voice was black ice. Deceptively, dangerously calm. 

“He tried to kill Jang-mi, Simon,” Noelle expanded. “He almost succeeded. And, in the process, he nearly killed Danny too.”

Joshua Begay had the look of a class clown, down to the wisecracking sneer. He’s good-looking, Simon supposed, if you were into the disheveled skater boy type, of which Joshua was a textbook example—shaggy dark hair, baggy jeans, too big plaid shirt over a too small white wife beater. His Converses, a scuffed and stonewashed turquoise, were propped up on one of the linoleum tables, a brazen posture that presumed victory. Simon couldn’t blame Luke for the murderous glare he was aiming at the guy. In fact, the entire pack looked ready to tear Joshua limb from limb, and some even had their claws out, itching for a piece of impetuous flesh.

“Fool,” Felix hissed under his breathe, as he, Noelle, and Simon filtered into the room. His fingers sparked dangerously with cobalt magic.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Noelle mouthed. “Remember—you promised Sage.”

“Regrettably,” Felix muttered, but his magic fizzled begrudgingly to nothingness. Simon, meanwhile, weaved his way through the restless crowd of werewolves to draw closer to the front counter, where Luke stood arms crossed. _He looks tired_ , Simon thought, as he noted creases around Luke’s eyes and mouth that he was sure hadn’t been there a year ago. _Older._

“I’m not sure what you’re playing at kid,” Luke was saying. “But I don’t have time for games.”

“That’s a shame,” Joshua sighed. “You know what they say about all work and no play. I recommend you get in touch with your inner child—oh, sorry—inner puppy. It does wonders for the soul.”

“It’s this a _joke_ to you?” Simon’s stomach fell out. _Maia._

She came charging out of the crowd, her face a portrait of beautiful fierceness. Her hand grabbed at Joshua by his collar and hauled him half out of his seat.

“You come in here,” she snarled, “prancing around like you own the place and making light of our alpha. I don’t know where you come from, but here, we don’t make jokes out of fighting words. Time to put your money your big mouth is. Get up and fight, asshole.” With another rough yank, Maia dragged Joshua up and shoved him toward Luke. He wobbled a foot or so, tripping over his own foot like a drunk trying to walk the line, but remained upright.

“Damn,” he sniggered. “I gotta say—werewolves suck at foreplay. Warlocks, vamps, fey—they appreciate a slow burn. But your kind, you’re always in a rush to get to the main event.”

“Maia’s right,” Luke said, pushing off the counter. “Enough talk. You made your challenge. Now either put ‘em up or get out.”

“Alright, then,” Joshua relented. His jokester smirk shifted to a cut of cruelty. “But when this is over, you’ll be wishing our dance had lasted a little a longer, ‘cause you see Graymark, our little friendly game of banter was your swan song.” 

Joshua’s hand zoomed to the back pocket of his jeans, hidden behind his oversized plaid shirt. When it re-emerged, he was holding a Glock, black barrel pointed squarely at Luke’s chest. Simon was moving before his mind registered it, before a terrible bang ricocheted off the walls, and something small and burning pierced his left shoulder. He bit hard into his lower lip, stifling the scream that exploded from his gut. His knees buckled, but Felix was there, catching him around the middle.

“Bastard,” Felix grunted, as he slung Simon’s arm around his shoulders and arched a wing around Simon’s body as a shield. “Of course he was planning to cheat.”

“Let’s agree,” Simon wheezed through the haze of pain, “not to tell Eshana, okay? If she finds out I have a bullet in me, I won’t see the outside of my room for a century.”

“It’s a deal,” Felix said, “if you promise not to tell Sage.”

“Tell Sage what?” Felix flashed Simon a conspiring look and then, with his pointer finger, shot off a round of azure magic. The blue sparking bead collided into Joshua’s own left shoulder, and he, yelping, dropped the gun as his opposing hand leapt to clutch at the wound.

“Show no pity,” Felix recited, “life for life, eye for eye, shoulder for shoulder.” He had uttered the amended Bible verse too lowly for it to be heard beyond Simon’s ear, but Joshua’s coyote yellow eyes bugged out, nearly popping with fury.

“Castleman?” Joshua cried. “Castleman, you son of a bitch!” 

“Who you callin’ son of a bitch, scumbag?” Maia snapped. She then promptly plowed her fist into Joshua’s nose, and cartilage crunched as Joshua went sailing back into the two-seater, taking the table down with him.

“ _Nice_ one, Maia,” Simon gurgled, a hair little too loud. Maia’s head whipped around.

“Simon?” she gasped. Her wide hickory eyes combed the room frantically. “Simon, is that you?” She started to sniff the air, certainty painting her expression more and more with each successive inhale.

“My invisibility glamours are good,” Felix said, “but I have to admit, they’re not impervious to a werewolf’s sense of smell.” Simon swallowed, as Maia, tiptoeing forward, began to reach into his space, her fingertips creeping close, closer, closing in— A bell jingled.

“The worm’s getting away!” someone hollered, and the room erupted. Torn from her hunt, Maia twirled around, joining the surge after Joshua, and the welcome bell rioted discordantly as the front door swung to and fro.

“I believe, gentleman,” Noelle said as she saddled up to Felix’s free side, “that is our cue to go.”

“Agreed,” Felix concurred. He released the hand that had been holding Simon’s arm around his shoulders and began to rotate to his wrist in a circular motion. As blue sparks sizzled to life, Simon glanced over his injured shoulder. Motionless, Luke was gazing out over the room, now nearly empty.

“…Simon?” he experimented exhaustedly. He sounded mostly cynical. A tinge hopeful. Simon’s lips twitched. _It’s good to see you, Luke_ , they wished to say. _I missed you._ He almost said them. Almost. But his lips remained sealed as cobalt took over and spirited him away.

There was nothing on Shangri-La’s menu Simon could consume, but it was hands down his favorite eating establishment, his second, Java Jones, nowhere as near and dear to his heart. The teashop’s proprietor gave it the solid edge, and like most things about Leilani, it was serene and effortless in its beauty. Located in a small, ivy lathered nook at the end of a narrow side street, Shangri-La had the aura of a “best-kept-secret” type of place and only attracted those who wandered off the beaten path. A new customer was easy to spot when they came through the door, wide eyes trying to comprehend the plethora of white pikake and purple plumeria allowed to grow at will. The aromatic bushes had claimed all the wicker tabletops as their domain, and their blooms lusciously spilled over the circular edges to the aged wooden floor. 

Only the counter, a polished stretch of rustic hickory, remained flower free and instead boasted an array of teas and fusions. Newcomers would often plop themselves down there on a stool and stare bewildered at the concoctions until Leilani appeared with a demure smile and a menu. Then they would stare at her, curls and slender curves silhouetted against a large, Gothic window brimming with sun, and it always took a moment for them to glance down at their laminated menu and mumble out their order. And novelty of her never seemed to fade, not even after she decanted a third or fourth refill. Simon could relate easily to their ceaseless wonder. He couldn’t help but discretely study Leilani’s eyes as she gently prodded at his wound. Their sepia sparkled periwinkle in the afternoon light

“It was very brave to protect your friend, Simon,” she was saying, “but you mustn’t forget that silver hurts vampires almost as badly as it does werewolves. It’s only because you’re daylighter that the bullet didn’t do more damage. But if had Joshua manage to fire off more than one shot…”

“Sorry, Leilani,” Simon replied sheepishly. “Next time, I’ll try to think before I leap.”

“No offense, man,” Samir snorted, “but you can barely think when you walk. I’ve seen you attempting to climb stairs. It ain’t pretty.” Stretching out in his metal bistro chair, Samir crossed his legs at the ankles and laced his fingers behind his head before countering Simon’s scowl with a Chesire grin. “I’m just tryin’ to help you not make promises you can’t keep, dude.”

“Gee, thanks,” Simon droned sarcastically. “It’s that why you’re here? To be my Jiminy Cricket? ‘Cause I’m good.”

“I’m here because Felix warned me that Noelle was thinking about feeding my precious darlings to sharks,” Samir explained, glancing at the lacquered box sitting on the table between him and Simon. 

“Ah, vengeance for Bunny,” Simon smirked. 

“The squid got what it deserved!” Samir snapped. “It tried to _eat_ me!”

“Come now,” Leilani hummed, flicking her eyes up at Samir with soft reprimand, “Noelle has fresher reasons to be upset with your…darlings.” Abruptly, Samir cleared his throat and took a sudden interest in the exposed beams of the ceiling, around which vines of white jasmine twined. Her chastising done, Leilani returned to the tending of Simon’s wound.

"This will sting a little,” she warned him as she lifted a slender hand, pointer finger aligned with the charred and torn flesh. From beneath the wispy bell sleeve of her chiffon blouse appeared a tendril of spring green as thin and delicate as a sapling. It ascended the back of her hand in a steady crawl and looped around her outstretched finger in a tight coil. Still it grew further, branching out from a polished fingernail and reaching into the black-red sore. Simon hissed, involuntarily snapping his fangs as the tendril dug deeper. But the pain ebbed quickly when the tendril shrunk back smoothly and remerged with a small, round silver bullet in its clutches. Its affliction removed, Simon’s skin wasted no time in sewing itself closed and anew.

“Thanks, Leilani,” Simon exhaled gratefully. Leilani, however, had gone silent. Slowly, she stood from her seat, her healing hand held in front of her chest in half a prayer. Then, swiftly and with unforgiving speed, she flung her hand out and behind her toward the counter. The tendril released the bullet and sent it flying straight through a pitcher of raspberry mint tea. Glass and liquid exploded over the tan wood, and the squealing shatter was accompanied by a dull, moaning thump. Simon’s eyes shot to the floor, and there, by the stems of the counter’s stools, was a disheveled, bruised Joshua Begay.

“The hell, Leilani!” Joshua growled, scrambling to his feet. “Did you just try to _shoot_ me? I get that I’m trespassing, but don’t you think that’s a little excessive?”

“Says the guy who brought a gun to a fistfight!” Simon scoffed as he leapt up to Leilani’s side. “What? Don’t like it when the tables turn, and you’re the one unarmed and staring down the barrel of a gun?”

“The little fucker never shows up unarmed,” Samir corrected dangerously. He didn’t get of his chair, but he did straighten his spine before leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He titled his head, eyes cast down, but a malevolently mischievous semper stretching across his face in full view. “He’s too much of a coward to play fair.”

“Oww,” Joshua whined mockingly, “that hurt. Sticks and stones, Aziz. Sticks and stones.”

“Oh,” Samir chuckled, “I can do better than sticks and stones, Begay. Just give me a reason—” He lifted his stare, and hellfire scarlet raged, consuming his copper irises whole. “I _dare_ you.” Simon would give Joshua this—he had one heck of a poker face.

“I didn’t come here to play with you, Aziz,” Joshua dismissed.

“You shouldn’t have come here at all, Joshua,” said Leilani. Desolateness strained her tone—a flower wilting under the weight of cold and drought. Joshua’s yellow eyes flinted to her in a quick, seething switch.

“Believe me, Leilani,” he snarled, “the last place I want is to be is here, but I have a problem, and he happens to be standing next to you.” Coyote yellow charged at Simon as if to garb him by the throat. “Simon, right? You look pretty good for a dead guy.”

“Thanks,” Simon replied with faux cheer. “It’s my moisturizing routine. Gives me that healthy, still-alive glow.”

“Ha, ha,” Joshua fired through an enraged grin. “Well, you might want to show your freshly exfoliated face in public every now and then, ‘cause the rest of the world is under the impression you’re no longer walk amongst us. And thanks to your possum routine, the Brooklyn pack wants my head on a spike. They think I conjured your ghost as a distraction, and they don’t take kindly to dirty tricks.”

“Seriously?” Simon snorted. “Again—you brought a gun to a fistfight. And you’re blaming the fact they want to rip you apart on me?”

“That was to even the playing field,” Joshua said. “Underhanded? Sure, okay. But an understandable move. But summoning the ghost of you? That made everything personal—and unforgivable. The she-bitch said as much.” 

“ _Watch it_ , asshole,” Simon warned, fangs catapulting from his gums. Joshua’s jaw dropped ajar, and, too late, Simon realized he was standing directly in the patch of colored sun streaming through the window ahead.

“Daylighter,” Joshua surmised with a chuckle. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Rarity is a prerequisite for residency at O’Keefe Place after all. He was your pick, wasn’t he, Leilani? Is he what you’ve been looking?” _It’s not a rhetorical question_ , Simon thought as Joshua’s gaze slid back to Leilani. Yellow softened, just a hair, but it was clearly there—a moment of vulnerability.

“What happens at O’Keefe Place is no longer your business, Begay,” Samir cut in. He finally rose from his chair, his stare still ablaze like a sky on fire. “And it’s not Simon’s fault that the Brooklyn pack will probably kill you on sight. Whatever mess you’re in, you made it all by yourself.”

The softness in Joshua’s eyes evaporated like snow under July heat. He squared his shoulders, the corners of his mouth stretching up and back into an inhuman, joker sneer, and suddenly his eyes were burning treacherously, sinister lights flickering in the shadows. Transiently, Simon thought of dark woods and feral flashes in the dead night.

“You idiots!” Joshua howled. “You have no idea what you’ve done. What you’ve _cost_ me! I needed that pack, and you got in the way. You ruined _everything_ —and you’ll pay for it. One way or another!” Samir merely cocked his head, matching devil grin for devil grin.

“Whatever it was,” he replied gleefully, “I am sure it was more than worth it.”

A roar ripping out of his throat, Joshua lunged, talons speedily sprouting from his fingernails. But Samir only smirked wider before disappearing in a plume of smoke, and Joshua sailed through ashy gray until he, for the second time that day, slammed into a table. Pikake and plumeria went flying in a riot of white and purple that rained down as Joshua and table hit the floor. Landing on his side, he squawked and then immediately rolled onto his back, palms flat against the floorboards and pushing himself back up. Yet, a booted heel stomped down on his jugular, shoving him down again with a breathless wheeze.

“Sister,” came a deep rumble, “it seems that you have a cockroach infestation.” The smoke dispelled, hazily revealing Keahi Everhart’s tall, languid form. In dark jeans shredded at the knees and a maroon blazer over black button-down, he once more looked like he never made it home from the after-party. As far as Simon could tell, he decided to drop-in only between raves and club crawls. Could he only talk to Leilani with liquor lingering in his veins, Simon wondered. Only face her when EDM was ringing faintly in his ears?

“Should I eradicate it for you?” Keahi continued, pressing his heel down a little harder.

“Brother, stop, please,” Leilani said somberly. “Joshua was just leaving.”

“She never squashes a bug,” Samir sighed, reappearing to Simon’s left. “No matter how much it deserves to be crushed.” Keahi kept his foot against Joshua’s windpipe a second longer

“Leave,” he ordered, the threat in his tone frighteningly nonchalant, “before I incinerate you.” He then lifted his foot up indolently, and Joshua gasped greedily, coughing splutteringly for elusive air, and managed to prop up his torso on his elbows.

“Th-is,” he panted, “isn’t… _over_.” He flung out his arm, snatching the black and gold box that had settled half a foot from him, and then vanished, dissolving instantly into nothingness.

“My darlings!” Samir shrieked furiously, and he too left, exiting in a smoldering column of smoke. Keahi cast a bister eye over the scene, passing over Simon with ready disinterest as he eased his hands into his pants’ pockets.

“I would speak to you, sister,” he murmured. “Alone.” 

“No way,” Simon immediately protested. “I’m not leaving her—”

“Simon,” Leilani interjected smoothly. “I’ll be alright. You need to go after Samir and find him before he finds Joshua and breaks a promise he made to Sage. That we all made to Sage.”

“What promise?” Simon demanded. “Noelle said something about that too.” Lugubriously, Leilani’s sepia drifted to the spot that Joshua had only moments ago vacated.

“To leave Joshua be,” Leilani answered. “We promised Sage we wouldn’t spill drop a single of his blood, despite what he had done. We promised we’d let him live.”


	8. Part I, Chapter 8: Lies of the Heart

Simon and alcohol had never gotten along. Even before he Turned—especially before he Turned—alcohol would knock him out with just one punch, and Simon would feel the effects for days after. In the tenth grade, there had been a particularly embarrassing incident at Jenny Anders’ sweet sixteen that involved one can of beer, a lampshade, and no clothes, and ever since Simon had sworn off alcohol in all its forms to prevent a repeat. But after finding the bloody remains of his former clan, seeing old faces without them seeing him, chasing Samir around half of Manhattan, and no closer to saving Magnus than he was this morning, Simon was going to make an exception tonight.

The house was silent as Simon slipped down the stairs to the kitchen. He had waited until he was sure Eshana was done with her nightly rounds and had retired to the heights of the North Turret, where Magnus now rested in an interior bedroom, having been moved at Mr. O’Keefe’s suggestion.

“In case anyone finds out he’s here,” the old man had reasoned. “It’s the most difficult place in the house for an intruder to get to. There’s only one way in—through Eshana. And Lord help the soul who finds themselves in that unfortunate predicament.”

Simon was glad that the residents of O’Keefe Place had linked arms with him so unquestioningly to protect someone they didn’t even know. Not an outgoing lot, they all preferred their reclusive fraternity of dejected souls—needed it, really, to salvage whatever faith they had left in comradery. He was no different and, for the very same reason, felt the relentless tug of guilt. The gigantic risk they were all taken was not lost on him, the world they normally avoided at all costs encroaching inch by inch into their protective bubble. At any minute, it could pop, slicing open old scars. 

“I need a drink,” he muttered to himself for the umpteenth time as he pushed open the door to the kitchen. The worn wooden door swung laboriously on its hinges, groaning crustily with rust, and Simon stepped through, his foot touching not black and white tile, but dry, reddish dirt. A sky of stars stretched overhead, the Milky Way’s diamond dust sprinkled generously over dark midnight blue. In the distant, Simon could make out the silhouettes of statuesque plateaus, sculpted and polished by ancient waters centuries gone. He stood silently, mentally tracing the landscape he had only seen through another’s lens.

“Don’t just stand there, Simon,” a slightly slurred alto beckoned. “Come sit down.” In a sheer slip of sapphire, Sage was perched on the protruding cliff, her alabaster legs dangling over the edge. Her icy white waves floated almost eerily on a cool night wind, and, peering over a naked shoulder, her eyes—a stark teal—gleamed luminously in the starlight. They watched as Simon trudged closer before sitting down precariously beside her. Gaging the absolute darkness of the canyon below, he brought his knees close to his chest and looped his arms around his shins. 

“Scared of heights?” Sage murmured drowsily. From her lap, she lifted a tall bottle of vodka, nearly three-fourth’s empty, and brought the rim to her lips. “It would make sense, given your talent for incoordination.” She then kicked back the bottle and took a long, leisurely swig.

“Not scared,” Simon replied not without a touch of indignation, “just don’t want to push my luck.”

“That is what Lady Luck is there for, Simon,” she chuckled. “To be pushed and tested. She will come and go as she pleases whether you do or don’t. Might as well as make it interesting.”

“Is that why you’re downing a fifth over the Grand Canyon?” Simon asked. “To make it interesting?”

“Oh please,” she said with a shake of her head, silvery strands bouncing around her pallid cheeks, “I once drank my weight in brandy and then went free diving in the Rio Grande. This—” She raised the bottle toward the stars. “—is mind-numbingly boring. Now, Joshua Begay? _That_ was me making it interesting.” 

“Oh,” Simon mumbled as Sage swallowed another gulp, “were you and he…?”

“Fucking?” Sage supplied, coming for air. “Yeah. We first met at a Beltane party two, three years ago, and that’s literally the first thing we did. On a bed of sycamore leaves and rowan flowers in my hair—even now, that’s hands down my best. No one’s ever come close.” 

She took one last drink, slowly savoring the final drops. Then, licking her lips, she held the empty bottle away from her and let go. It fell from view without a sound, and Simon knew his ears would only pick a faraway ting when it finally found the ground so far below.

“I waited a year before inviting him to O’Keefe Place,” she continued. She snapped fingers, and suddenly she was holding two more bottles, one with clear, smooth liquid and the other with a thick yellow. “I wanted to be sure. Sure that he was like us—lonely and not just lone.”

“What’s the difference?” Simon said as he glanced down at the two bottles concernedly.

“Lonely doesn’t want to be alone,” she explained. “Lonely is looking for somewhere to belong. Lonely is capable of love. Lone? Lone is exactly what it wants to be.” She looked at Simon out the corner of her eyes, teal sharpening. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” she demanded. She shoved the bottle of creamy chartreuse into Simon’s chest. “They’re not both for me.” 

“What is this?” he squeaked, fingers clamoring to find purchase around the bottle’s body. 

“Plasma,” Sage answered. “The vamp version of straight, hard liquor. One shot of the stuff is usually enough to make your people giddier than a pixie on a sugar high.”

“Why would I want this?”

“Because you came down here for the same reason I did—to get plastered and forget.” With a quick yet strong flick of her thumb, she forced off the cap of her bottle and jugged for a good ten seconds. Simon’s fingers fiddled with the cap of his bottle.

“What…,” he hedged. “What are you trying to forget?” Sage smiled up at the shimmer dusted sky.

“All the lies my heart ever told me,” she said. “But also the truth that broke it.”

“The truth…?” The smile faded, as teal came crashing down like a torrent of falling stars.

“I fell for lone feigning lonely. I failed the most important lesson my mother taught me. ‘Beware the lone,’ she used to say. ‘They don’t come to join. They come to rape and to raid.’”

“Sage—” Simon began, though not knowing what to say.

“Do you want to know something funny?” she cut in. “No one liked Joshua when he first moved in. But he won them all over, one by one. Except Leilani. She was friendly to him, polite and pleasant as she is with everyone. But they were never friends—she’s unsurpassed in reading people, you know? It’s like she can tell with one look who people really are deep down—which is why no one blinked eye when she brought you around. We knew you had to be decent if you could win Leilani as a friend, because Joshua never could. And he tried, hard, like he was trying to prove something.”

 _Is he what you’ve been looking for?_ So, had Joshua really been asking _what does he have that I don’t_? Looking for the answers to the test he had failed? No, that can’t be it, ‘cause what was so great about Simon? What could Leilani have possibly seen in him that cold morning on the shore? Him—a bumbling, undead mess ready to offer himself up to the sun’s judgment? Even now, Simon wasn’t sure there was much to admire. Inside, it was still there—the thirst—thrumming and humming, pulsing with the urge to take and to drain—

A twist of the wrist, and Simon shucked his bottle’s cap aside into the ravine. He placed the rim between his salivating fangs, tipped back his head, and started to chug. The liquor took hold instantly, intense, electrifying heat scorching his veins, but he kept gulping, and the smooth, mellow cream slid down his throat like creeping lava. After the sixth swallow, the bottle was towed out of his mouth, and the notion of tightening his grip around the bottle’s neck to stop it was too cumbersome to execute.

“Hey,” he grumbled instead. “I wasn’t done…”

“Yes, you are,” Sage replied patronizingly, as the bottle of plasma vanished into thin air as quickly as it had appeared. “You just drank enough to knock over an entire clan or two. You’ll be out cold in a couple minutes.”

“The clan is gone,” he said suddenly, blinking owlishly. The stars were starting to swirl into a Picasso, their light and dark backdrop rolling into each other in broad, blurring strokes. “They’re all gone, and I don’t know what to do next.”

“It was a good plan,” Sage lamented. “Using Samir’s little devils to strong arm the Manhattan clan into stealing the shadowhunter’s bow and arrows for us—it kept us from far the sight of the Circle. But the problem is we assumed that the Circle was the only thing to hide from. There’s a bigger game going on, and we have no idea who’s playing. Until we do, no plan is going to work. We need more information. I think some recon is in order.”

Simon could hear Sage, but her words were jumbling together and becoming tangled in indecipherable, discordant noise. He swayed, gravity’s lullaby rocking him back and forth. Dramatically, he swung dangerously toward pitch black, startled backward, and then swung a little closer. Closer…and closer…and closer…

And then he let go, freefalling into oblivion.

He landed hard against his pillow, and its downy stuffing did little to stop the pounding that assaulted his skull, jackhammering straight into brain matter.

“Araggh,” he groaned, palm massaging his temple as he struggled to sit up.

“Well, good morning, sunshine. Or, should I say ‘good evening, dumbass.’” The fog lifted instantly, and Simon shot up, back flat against the headboard.

“B-B-Brielle?” he cried shrilly, scrambling for his quilt and yanking it over his boxers. Standing at the foot of his bed, Brielle simply cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh please,” she snorted. “Even if there was something to cover up, I wouldn’t be interested. So don’t get your panties in a wad.”

“What are you doing in my room?” he snapped. “At least knock! You don’t see me waltzing into your room whenever I feel like it!”

“Of course not,” Brielle, monotone, said. “If you tried, I’d dismember you. Slowly. Joint by joint. Head last so you stay alive for every excruciating second.”

“That is not the point!” Simon yelled and instantly regretted it as his entire head throbbed. He roughly rubbed circles into his forehead skin before speaking again. “You just can’t completely disregard my privacy—wait, did you say ‘good evening’?” His eyes flicked over to his side table, where a squat, tan alarm clock boasted a late 7:53 p.m.

“Why did you let me sleep so late?” he gasped. “Magnus only has a week before he falls into a century long coma, and you let me waste an entire day—”

“Shut up,” Brielle barked. “No one ‘let’ you do anything. You’re the fool who drank half a bottle of plasma in one sitting and passed out on the kitchen floor. Trying to wake you up was like trying to rise the dead—again. The old man said we should just put you to bed and let you sleep it off. Leilani still sat next to you for hours, though, watching over your stupid butt. She only agreed to get ready for the party when Sage volunteered me to babysit you.”

“Party?” Simon repeated, trying and failing to ignore the tinge of guilt that pinged in his chest. “What party?” Letting out an exasperated huff, Brielle trudged across the faded blue carpet to Simon’s closest and threw open the folding doors.

“While you were sleeping the day away,” she said as her unimpressed baby blues surveyed a rung of rumpled jeans, “the rest of us went all over the city to see what we could find out about the charming couple you and Noelle ran into at the Hotel DuMort.”

“And did you?” Simon asked sheepishly. “Find out anything?

“Nothing about who they were or who they worked for,” Brielle answered, moving on to an array of Simon’s Star Wars and Lord of the Ring-themed t-shirts, “but plenty about what they’ve been up to. And they’ve been busy. Apparently, Downworlders have been going missing for weeks in scores. Vamps, weres, Seelies and Unseelies—gone overnight and never to be seen again. Interestingly, your friend was the first warlock taken but the last abduction. After he disappeared about two weeks ago, there hasn’t been another victim. In fact, all’s been quiet on the frontier. Until yesterday morning when the ninety-five percent of the Manhattan clan was obliterated in their own home.”

“Ninety-five? Only Raphael survived,” Simon corrected. Shaking her head, Brielle pulled out one of Simon’s nicer sweaters and stuck a finger through a hole in the pocket.

“Actually, a handful besides Noelle’s boytoy survived by escaping into the sewer tunnels under the hotel, at least according to this disgusting little hobgoblin at Tikki’s. He was pestering a waitress, so he and I chatted awhile about how you treat a lady—a guy will tell you just about anything when his balls are at stake.” Simon winced and involuntarily wondered if the hobgoblin made it out of the pool hall…intact. Knowing Brielle, chances were good he didn’t.

“Anyway,” she went on, putting the sweater back, “the Downworld is in an utter panic. The werewolves are considering leaving the city and running for the hills, the Fey are already hiding _under_ the hills, and the vamps are hiding under the Institute. They’re in the ‘protective’ custody of the Clave, not that anyone thinks the Clave is doing a very good job of protecting anyone these days. Only the warlocks, entrepreneurs that they are, are behaving like business as usual.”

“Ok,” Simon said ponderously, “but where does a party factor into all of this?”

“It’s tradition,” Felix explained, as he strolled into the room. “A party is always thrown to celebrate the appointment of a new High Warlock of Brooklyn.”

“New High Warlock of Brooklyn?” Simon echoed incredulously. “Magnus is the High Warlock of Brooklyn! And did everyone forget how to knock?”

“As far as anyone outside of this house knows, Magnus Bane has been missing for weeks and is probably dead. And this is not the time to be without a leader, hence the new appointment,” Felix replied, reaching Brielle’s side. He too began examining Simon’s wardrobe. “Finding anything that will do?”

“Hell no,” Brielle clucked. “The vamp dresses like he’s still the president of a high school dungeons and dragons club. Like told I Eshana, it’s bananas to think that he has anything in here for a black-tie affair. But Eshana is bananas, so--”

“Careful,” Felix advised, toeing at Simon’s rattiest pair of sneakers, “That woman hears all. I once made passing suggestion to Danny about how to spice up our nightly activities, and she locked him in his room and put up wards to keep me out and, I quote, his ‘purity’ safe. It took three days for O’Keefe to convince her to take down the wards”

“I remember that,” Brielle said, grinning to herself. “Best three nights of sleep I’ve gotten since you two shacked up.”

“Guys!” Simon interjected. “The topic of conversation is three miles back this way! I still don’t get it—so the warlocks are having a shindig to celebrate Magnus’ replacement—that’s not a party I want to go to. So why are you acting like it is?”

”Seriously?” Brielle sneered, pivoting on her heel to glare at him. “Even you’re not _that_ stupid.”

“He’s not,” Felix assured patiently, amusement perking up the corners of his mouth. “He’s just extremely hungover. I know you had a hard night last night, Simon. I’ve been to Grand Canyon with Sage too, so trust me, I know. But you need to shake it off and think like the enemy.”

“The party starts in thirty,” Brielle said hurriedly. “We don’t have time for him to sober up and do the math.” Swifter than a gazelle, she leapt across the room and landed straddled over Simon’s thighs, her antlers looming forebodingly over him. If he squinted, Simon could see a weak red glow flickering at their razor tips. Once it went out, she would need to feed again.

“Pay attention,” she demanded. “I’m about to give you the cheat codes. Imagine—you’re a trapper company after a warlock who, for some reason, is valuable. So valuable that you _and_ the Circle are after him. So valuable two of your men threw discretion to the wind and slaughtered almost an entire vampire clan looking for him. But now you have a problem: you’ve spooked the prey, and they’re going into hiding. Your hunting grounds are about to disappear. What do you do now?”

“…I…go after the only game left,” Simon, hedging, supplied. “The game that hasn’t sensed the danger.” Smirking satisfactorily, Brielle leaned back onto her haunches.

“Well, look at that,” she said, “there might be a killer instinct somewhere in you after all.” 

“I could have told you that,” Simon bit back stiffly before he could stop himself. The bitterness in Brielle’s blues didn’t thaw—she was the type well beyond softer feelings—but her mouth creased into a fleeting frown, a sign that she understood that she had poked too close to Simon’s unseen sores, and she lifted herself off the bed in a silent, agile swoop.

“It’s not just that the trappers might show up,” Felix chimed, sidestepping the residue of tension. “There are also rumors that say the new High Warlock, Lorenzo Rey, might have had a hand in Magnus’ disappearance. He’s been gunning for an appointment for decades, and he and Magnus apparently have some bad blood—two birds, one stone.”

“If that the turns out to be the case,” Brielle murmured, “I’ll rip Rey apart for you, Simon. His hands will go first to divorce him from his magic, and then he can die on his knees, begging and helpless.”

“Your talent for retribution is truly inspiring, Brielle,” Felix mused as he reached for the ajar doors of Simon’s closet and brought them closed. “Sometimes, I take a page from your book when a client wants a more…creative revenge.”

“Betrayers deserving nothing less than the reddest of deaths,” Brielle replied. She titled her chin up, antlers casting a ghoulish shadow over the wall’s striped wallpaper—black skeletal fingers spreading to snare deserving quarry. Not for the first time, Simon pondered how Brielle’s kind came to be—what measure of pain wrought a being so bent on delivering reckoning.

“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” Felix said, turning around. “Now, it’s time for you to get up, Simon. Brielle’s right. We don’t have any more time to waste, and everything in that closest is a crime—a capital crime.” 

“He doesn’t mean against fashion,” Brielle tacked on. “He means against all eyes everywhere, including the blind.”

“Okay, okay!” Simon cried. “Message received! I’ll see if I can borrow something from Samir. Just leave already! If the party is starting soon, then shouldn’t you two be getting ready too?” He waved emphatically first at Brielle’s spaghetti-strapped tank top and then Felix’s white-washed jeans.

“We’re not going,” Brielle said, moving a hand to her thin, straight hip. “Only you and Leilani are crashing.”

“What?” Simon balked. “Only me and Leilani? But that doesn’t make any sense! If it’s a party full of warlocks, shouldn’t at the very least you go too, Felix? Or Sage?”

“Sage is not a warlock,” Felix answered as he adjusted his glasses. “She’s a werewolf with warlock powers. Every actual warlock at the party will pick up on the difference, and that might prompt questions Sage isn’t interested in answering. And, unfortunately, I can’t go anywhere near an official warlock function. If my magical signature is recognized, I might end up in the lower reaches of Spiral’s Labyrinth.” Simon’s brow furrowed.

“Spiral’s—”

“It’s like the Warlock U.N., Pentagon, and Library of Congress all rolled into on,” Brielle, exasperated, cut off. “And the lower levels are basically Guantanamo Bay. Felix here is on the Warlock Most Wanted list. Apparently, it has something to do with the High Warlock of New Orleans spending thirty years as a swamp rat.” Simon’s gaze flew wildly to Felix, who merely adjusted his glasses again, green-hazel gleaming a tad wickedly.

“Story for another time,” he said. “Anyway, Sage and I can’t go in, but we’ll be outside close by. And the truth is, sending you and Leilani in is risky enough. The warlock community is small and close knit to the point of being enmeshed. Everyone has known everyone else for centuries. One newcomer will stand out enough, and two will never escape scrutiny. We were just going to send Leilani, but Danny astutely pointed out you’d never let her go alone.”

“Danny’s right,” Simon concurred easily. “I won’t.”

“Then it’s about damn time you got the hell out of bed!” Brielle huffed. “Stop being such a freakin’ prude and get up already!” And with that, she abruptly grabbed a fistful of Sion’s quilt and gave it a vicious tug, yanking it to the floor and exposing Simon’s whole body to the chill of the evening air.

“You’re awake,” Danny announced, his pupil-less pearl stare zeroing in on Simon the moment he entered the sitting room.

“You clean up pretty nice, man,” Samir greeted appraisingly. “Wait—are those _my_ pants?” A rather stupid question in Simon’s opinion, because it was glaringly obvious that they were Samir’s pants. He was the only one in the house with such a garishly bold sense of style. Simon certainly never would have taken them off the rack, the skin tight black jeans overly embellished with a yellow-gold pattern of interloping large rings interspersed with oversized lilies.

“Those _are_ my pants,” Samir deduced needlessly. “My Versace!”

“Oh pipe down, genie-boy,” Brielle rumbled, passing from behind Simon. She walked past the couch where Samir and Danny sat and dropped onto the loveseat, draping a leg over one of its arms. “It’s not like you ever wear them.”

“Because I’ve been saving them!” Samir hissed. “I was waiting for the perfect occasion.” Brielle peered him at him knowingly and chortled.

“For that ‘perfect occasion’ to occur,” she drawled, “you would need to grow a pair and finally work up the courage to ask Jang-mi out like a real man. Alas, I don’t see you hitting puberty any time soon. I mean, the vamp over there can’t even admit how he feels, and he’s closer to a date than you are.” Flushing, Samir almost sprung from his seat but was halted by Simon’s sputtering.

“How many times do I have to say it—it’s _not_ like that!” he half-yelled. “And this a fact gathering mission! It’s not anywhere close to a date!”

“Actually,” Samir considered aloud, as he leaned back against the sofa’s off-white suede. “It kinda is. It’s got all the necessary ingredients.”

“How you figure?” Simon squawked.

“One, you and Leilani are dressing to impress,” Felix began. He was standing right behind Danny and had his hands resting on Danny’s narrow shoulders, tracing light circles atop Danny’s collarbones with his fingers. Danny’s fingers, splayed in his lap and gloved, twitched but did not rise. “Two, you are escorting her to a formal event. Three, you’ll be together, posing as a couple. Like Samir said, all the makings of a proper date.”

Simon palmed his face and took in a long breath. He was tired of this debate—so sick and tired of it. It was as if his feelings had been placed in the center of funhouse. He knew what his heart looked like, but the mirrors were distorting its reflection and attempting to persuade him it was nothing like he believed. What words would clear the path out? What could break the deceiving glass so everyone could see the truth?

Approaching feminine chatter broke Simon from his reverie just as small hands clasped his bigger one. Bouncing excitedly on the balls of her bare feet, Sophelia beamed brightly up at him.

“Isn’t she pretty, Simon?” the little girl squealed delightedly. She looked eagerly toward the door, her gaze leading Simon’s, and his breath promptly evaporated. There, between the fussing triangle of Sage, Noelle, and Jang-mi, was Leilani. She was dressed in a peach, charmeuse gown overlaid with matching tulle that flared elegantly at its bottom. Her glossy curls had been swept up and back, leaving a few strands to frame her olive gold cheeks, while the rest cascaded along the naked skin of her back. From under kohled and long-lashed eyelids, her amber eyes shined with a violet tint accentuated by spinel jewels strung around her neck.

“Simon!” she exclaimed. “You’re awake.” Her smile radiated, and Simon questioned, between him and his heart, just who was deceiving who? 


	9. Part I, Chapter 9: A Barrage of Black

“Now remember, Simon, you’re going to have do most of the talking,” Sage instructed quietly, as she smoothed the gold lapels of Simon’s jacket. “Leilani can’t lie to save her life.”

“I know,” he mumbled, batting away Sage’s fingers. Sage, glaring, slapped the back of his hand and resumed her nitpicking, though as far as Simon was concerned, there was no amount of small adjustments that would make the jacket any less hideous. It sported the same gaudy print as the pants, and the combined effect was a freakshow of bad taste. And they said _Simon_ made poor fashion choices? Obviously, it was Samir who was due for a closet intervention.

“No, you don’t know,” Sage grumbled. “I mean it in the most literal sense—Leilani can’t lie to save her life, let alone yours. She’s like the fey that way. She’s physically incapable of lying, but unlike the fey, she has no practice in getting inventive with the truth.”

“Then why on earth were you even thinking about sending her in alone?” he hissed. “If she can’t lie—”

“It’s _because_ she can’t lie,” Sage interjected. Letting go of the offending lapels in resigned defeat, she flicked her viridian eyes up at him, and they reflected the pale moonlight in a warning glint. “She can’t lie, and she doesn’t want to deceive. She’s genuine and honest, and people sense that the moment they meet her. Even before they realize it, they trust her. Open up to her. You should know that better than anyone.”

Simultaneously, he and Sage looked to their right, where, a few feet away, Felix and Leilani stood surveying a large mansion down the road from the cluster of dogwoods the four had taken cover under. It was an ostentatiously massive home, colonial in style, with large white columns and an upper veranda that wrapped around the house’s entire girth. Like O’Keefe Place, it had been designed with wealth and power in mind, but there was no glamour concealing it, no air or pretense of humility. Simon pondered if the mansion’s exterior complimented its owner’s interior.

“It looks like the party’s gotten under way,” Felix announced. “You two should get going.” He looked to Sage, who, with a showman’s flare, rolled her wrists, hands circling one another in a smooth series of twirls, and green ignited, a clover ember flaring into a swirling torrent of emerald.

“Remember,” Sage said as the portal took form, “we’ll be close by, but we won’t be able to see what’s exactly going on inside. So be careful, and don’t dally. When the trappers show, stay only long enough to see if you can get some clue about who they are or what they want. After that, _bail_. Understand? Tonight’s not the night for heroics.” She made a point of staring hard first at Simon and then Leilani in equal measure.

“Don’t worry,” Simon jested tenuously, “we left the capes at home.”

“We’re serious, Simon,” Felix reprimanded sharply. “We know you two are the type to run into burning buildings to save strangers, but, like Sage said, no heroics tonight. The warlocks down there are hundreds of years-old—they’re old and experienced enough to know that coming to this party is a huge risk. Whether they can handle the consequences of their choices is not your concern.”

Felix pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, leveling a cold, calculating gaze, and Simon glanced away, hoping that Felix’s hazel wouldn’t pierce too deep. Peach and spinel provided a splendid distraction as Leilani drew close to his side. She reached for his hand.

“We’ll do our best,” she promised sweetly, “to come back safely.” Her raspberry lips perked up into encouraging smile, and her fingers intertwined with Simon’s, weaving a lovely crisscross of cinnamon brown and icy white. Together, they slowly approached the churning, sparking green, and Simon didn’t need to look behind to know Sage and Felix were both stone-faced, their worry sealed tightly behind pragmatic masks. They, like Simon, had surely noticed Leilani hadn’t assured them that self-preservation would be her priority. Sage was right—Simon knew better than anyone how genuine and honest Leilani was. And he thus knew that Leilani did not make promises she couldn’t keep.

Sage’s portal set Simon and Leilani down right on Lorenzo Rey’s porch and before his front door, a tall slab of robust maple, which had been left wide open for the steady stream of partygoers. Chatter drifted through the doorway in lazy waves, a low, indecipherable buzz.

“Ready?” Simon asked, squeezing Leilani’s hand. She squeezed back.

“Ready,” she murmured, and, palms pressed tightly together, they crossed the threshold. 

The first thing Simon noticed were the candelabras. There were dozens of them, displaying a dozen of thick white candles each, and the flickering glow illuminated the golden edges of the damasks etched into the eggshell white wallpaper of the main hall. The effervescent light was also caught in the diamond chandelier above, older and grander the one at O’Keefe Place, but Simon thought its sheen of twinkles lacked warmth and resolutely preferred the brightness of his own home.

The second thing that caught Simon’s attention were the stares. The deceptively young faces of the crowd of warlocks had turned toward the newly arrived couple. Over glasses of fizzing champagne, they leaned close to one another, lips to ears, and the chatter transformed into thunderous whispers, which dampened in volume only slightly as the crowd parted to make way for the host, who made his entrance down a wide, curving staircase. He was shorter than Simon expected and appeared to be, at the oldest, in his earlier thirties. He had ears a tad too large for his broad, somewhat squarish face and a long, pointed nose that sat between a pair of thick eyebrows and deep set brown eyes. His dark hair was slicked back into a short ponytail, and a stubbly goatee framed in his thin lips, which carried the perfect imitation of a hospitable smile.

“Ah,” Lorenzo Rey greeted, as he reached the bottom of the red-carpeted stairs, “you must be the much talked about novices. You are most welcomed! It’s been so long since we’ve had young blood.” He sounded cordial, but there was unrestrained suspicion in his inspecting stare, and Simon could hardly blame him. The letter must have had come as one hell of a surprise—a hastily scribbled request for introduction tied to the leg of a white raven.

“It’s the traditional way a new warlock asks for permission to join the warlock community,” Felix had explained as he set the eerily pale bird a flight. “The white raven represents a good omen, and for warlocks, one more added to our small ranks is the best omen there is—new life for a stagnant society.” But with recent events—Downworlders vanishing overnight—how could the unknown not be looked at with distrust?

“Hello,” Simon said. “I’m—  
“Castor Bleu,” Lorenzo Rey cut in. “A mere nineteen-years-old.” He looked Simon up and down, eyes roaming over the glamour Jang-mi had cast an hour earlier. Simon’s features had been altered to appear longer, thinner, and serpentine, and his eyes were an unsettling glassy grey, his hair a shoulder-length ginger red. Lorenzo didn’t spend much time looking him over and quickly moved to Leilani, whose beauty had been unchanged.

“…And Violet Dawn,” Lorenzo continued, his voice a degree softer, “a tender eighteen. Again, welcome…though, I must admit, I’m a bit…perplexed. Your request came at such short notice. I would’ve thought to have at least heard your names before tonight.” Simon, well-prepared by Felix for the unspoken question, smirked.

“We originally sent our request to Magnus Bane,” Simon said casually. “He wanted to teach us how to control our magic better before formally introducing us. He was giving us lessons, but then he suddenly disappeared. Two weeks, not a word, and then all of sudden we hear there is a new High Warlock of Brooklyn. So, here we are…” Lorenzo stiffened at the mention of Magnus’ name, as around them, the whispers grew in their fervency.

“Ah, I see, you were Magnus’ pupils,” Lorenzo muttered before clearing his throat. “Well, I am sure if he were here, Magnus would have been honored and delighted in introducing you…I’m afraid I’ll have to do. So, before we go any further, if you each wouldn’t mind revealing your mark. It is a necessary part of the introduction.”

Simon and Leilani glanced at one another. Felix had prepared them for this too—the displaying of warlock marks. It was indeed a necessary step of a new warlock’s introduction to the magic community; it proved once and for all they belonged. But Felix had also advised them not to look too eager. A warlock’s mark, often the root of hate from within and out, was beyond personal.

“Please, don’t be afraid,” Lorenzo, sensing their feigned hesitation, urged. “No one here will judge you.” Tentatively, Simon lifted his free hand and dramatically waved his fingers, and his glamour wavered to reveal another—this one with reptilian pupils and spiky, scaly skin around its eyes sockets. Meanwhile, Leilani gave a more elegantly wave, and a crystalline, spiral horn appeared from the center of her forehead. It had been the dreamy suggestion of Sophelia, who had insisted it would make Leilani even prettier. Strangely, the little girl had not been wrong.

“Isss thiss sssu-ficient?” Simon queried, a lizard’s long, forked tongue flicking between his lips.

“Quite, thank you,” Lorenzo clipped, glancing for the briefest of moments at Simon before soaking in Leilani’s radiance. “Would you like something to drink, my dear?”

“That would be very nice. Thank you, Mr. Rey,” Leilani said demurely, as her horn evaporated in a lavender shimmer.

“Please, call me Lorenzo.” He proffered her his arm, and she looked to Simon, her amber eyes silently asking permission. There was no need to ask. Lorenzo becoming enchanted with her was the whole point of her presence. This—them together—wasn’t real, and she wasn’t really Simon’s. Yet, when she let go of his hand after he nodded his consent, Simon’s insides twisted as he watched another man lead her away.

“Castor, was it?” The woman who was addressing Simon had saddled up to him seemingly out of nowhere. Nursing an untouched glass of wine, he had been idling along the perimeter of the large salon and pretending to admire Lorenzo’s vast collection of rare art, as his ears sifted through dozens of party conversations for mentions of Magnus or his disappearance. For the last forty minutes, however, he had been gallingly unsuccessful. There had been garden-variety comments on the weather, a rousing debate about the necessity of wormwood for a beautifying elixir, and a general consensus that the alcohol was intolerably water-downed. But the name Magnus Bane was glaringly absent. It was there, Simon sensed, at the back of throats and minds, caged and chained by pretense and pleasantries. Overshadowed by the fear of a nameless menace that no one wanted to name.

“Yes,” Simon, guarded, answered. “And you are…?”

“Catarina,” the woman replied. “Catarina Loss.” Petite and slim, she was a handsome woman, brown skin stretched over broad features and thick braids piled a top of her head, but she wore an expression of distrust as plainly as she wore a simple, black cocktail dress.

“And how can I help you, Ms. Loss?” Simon asked, grinning widely. Under the cover his mask, his smile was disturbingly reminiscent of a viper curling back its lips, an intentional effect meant to make others turn away and pay as little attention to him as possible. If Leilani, unmarred by illusion, was light, attracting the truth with her natural shine, then Simon was shadow, sniffing out what strived to stay unseen. Yet, face to face with an agent of the dark, Catarina stood her ground.

“You said you and your friend were students of Magnus Bane,” she said, crossing her arms, “which I find very curious. Magnus and I talk almost every day, and he never mentioned teaching two novices.” _Shit_ , Simon groaned inwardly.

“Magnus never mentioned you either,” he managed to say smoothly. “Or anyone else for that matter. And, honestly, I wasn’t completely sold on this whole introduction thing. It feels so very…debutante ball, and I don’t like the limelight—it’s not very flattering on me. Maybe Magnus was respecting my privacy until he knew I’d made up my mind.”

“Well, it looks like you have,” Catarina scoffed. “What prompted the change I wonder.” The accusation, vague and half-formed, was woven in-between her words, and Simon schooled his features to remain cool and composed.

“Violet,” he said nonchalantly. “She’s worried about Magnus, and she thought we’d hear something about him here. Plus, she thinks I can’t spend forever in our lair. She says it’s unhealthy and that we need to get out and meet more of ‘our people.’ So here I am, making my debut and drinking weak-ass wine.” He brought his glass to his nostrils, sniffed the grape-yellow liquid inside disdainfully, and lowered it again. “At least if Magnus was here, there be some real liquor, and I wouldn’t have to make it through this little soiree sober. The things I do for love…” He trailed off, his gaze mindlessly sweeping over the crowd until it caught a glimpse of peach. Across the room, Leilani was still on the arm of Lorenzo, who appeared to be prattling on and on about a large Renaissance painting of Mary and baby Jesus.

“She’s very lovely, Violet,” Catarina said. “Quite the belle of the ball.” The blade edge in her voice dulled, as her inquisitive stare trailed after Simon’s, and he fought off the impulse to chuckle. Even from clear cross a room, Leilani could coax the gentler side out of anyone.

“She’s the belle of everywhere she goes,” he murmured, allowing himself to indulge in a moment of truth. But then Leilani’s tinkling giggle nipped his ears, and she grinned gorgeously at something Lorenzo was saying. His chest tightening, Simon diverted his attention back to the inquisition at hand.

“Anyway, Ms. Loss,” he sighed, “I believe you were insinuating something.” Catarina’s head snapped around, and she straightened her shoulders, readying for another assault.

“My best friend is missing,” she spat, the knife in her tone sharpened and posed to slice. “And, out of nowhere, come you two, claiming to be his students. And your privacy be damned—Magnus would’ve mentioned taking on a novice, even if he didn’t give a name. I don’t know who you are, but I do know it isn’t who you claim to be.” Simon smiled, stretching the corners of his lips wide to showcase the fangs Catarina couldn’t see. Inwardly, he seethed, not at Catarina, but at himself, loathing that instinct had so effortlessly taken over. Hating the visceral longing to exsanguinate the threat.

“You won’t believe me, Ms. Loss,” he said rigidly, “but I’m not the enemy here. In fact, I think we might even be on the same side. Once, Magnus saved me, and I fully intend to repay that debt if I can.”

“Saved you?” Catarina derided. “Saved you from what?”

“Myself.” The simplistic sincerity sent Catarina jolting backward, as if dodging the lash of a serpent’s strike. She squinted at him the way people do when they try to decipher fine print, and she pressed her lips into a grim line. She wanted to map the fault lines in his façade, but an answer so blatant in its honesty had thrown her off track, and now she had lost the scent of the lie. Simon could see the recalculations configurating in her eyes, and he waited, drawing up countermeasures for whatever new strategy of interrogation she settled upon. But the battle was not fated to continue. Instead, it ended in a barrage of black.

Shadowhunter black.

Every night, Simon dreamed of coming face to face again with Jace Wayland. It always started with the blackness of shadowhunter gear and never failed to end with the vivid red of shadowhunter blood.

Simon prayed to whatever deity listened to the damned that this very real moment would not conclude the same way as his night terrors—him on his knees, screaming, fresh heavenly blood wet on his tongue, and Jace’s dying pleas pounding his eardrums.

“Catarina,” Jace said gruffly. “We need you.” His heterochromatic eyes—one blue, one gold—bored single-mindedly into the warlock, granting Simon a moment to give him a wide-eyed onceover. He hadn’t change at all, except maybe for a sparse, bristly golden five o’clock shadow, but that could be chalked up to the late hour. Otherwise, he still was the picture of Nephilim perfection—sculpted like Michangelo’s David, with the jawline to match. His golden blonde hair was combed back and held in place by a jar’s worth of hair gel, and in another time, in another life, Simon would have gleefully ribbed him for it until Jace threatened to maim one of his body parts. But Simon hadn’t been _that_ Simon since the night he had clawed his way out of his grave—the one Jace had dug for him.

“I’m in the middle of something, shadowhunter,” Catarina growled out of the corner of her mouth.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your _riveting_ conversation with snake-face here,” Jace retorted, “but we are on security detail, and there is a security issue that needs attention.”

“It’s Lorenzo’s party,” Catarina, exasperated, said. “Go tell him.”

“Alec’s going to give that a try,” Jace replied, “but Rey’s been a little distracted making goo-goo eyes all night, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop anytime soon.”

“Snake-face here can help with that,” Simon snarked, shoving his wineglass into Jace’s hands. “It is my girlfriend he’s making goo-goo eyes at, and a man can only endure so much before he has to shut that shit down.”

He marched with off into the crowd without waiting to hear the quip that Jace undoubtedly had in queue, but even as he put bodies and distance between himself and them, Simon picked up snippets of Jace and Catarina’s voices.

“…knows something about Magnus!” Catarina fumed, her fury a reeving engine.

“Maybe,” Jace snarled, “but right now, there are bigger fish to fry! The wards…” Another bomb of black exploded into Simon’s field of vision, and Jace’s words were lost hopelessly in the fallout. Alec’s head of black hair towered over most everyone, and, just as Simon always recalled him, there was a soldier’s rigidity in his stance, shoulders square and hands clasped behind his back. Posed strength rippled beneath taunt, pale skin inked with pitch black runes, and in the slightest of movements, it could spring to the surface and deliver force fleeter than an arrow sailing in the dark. 

But the front did not match the back nor Simon’s memories. Bruise blue, accentuated by the sallowness of the surrounding skin, ringed Alec’s hazel eyes, and weight loss had given his cheeks a sickly frailty, exaggerating the angles of his cheekbones and chin. He was still handsome, but there was a film of brokenness overlaid with his image that had Simon seeing double—the resolute warrior of his memories and a grieving man held together by strings of ebbing hope.

“Your attention is required,” Alec was telling Lorenzo in a tired, trudging drone. Lorenzo’s mouth twitched up in a flash of disgust, but his quicksilver grin emerged in a blink, and he patted Leilani’s hand—the one that was still lightly grasping his elbow—before lifting it to his lips.

“I do apologize, my dear,” he sighed, giving an airy kiss to her knuckles. “But I must step away for a moment. I do hope you will forgive me.”

“No need to apologize,” Simon cut in. He slid his hand around the twinkling tulle about Leilani’s waist, and Lorenzo’s deep-set gaze tracked his fingers until they clasped her hip. “You’re the host, after all. I’m sure you need to mingle and say your how-you-do’s. Violet and _I_ will find a way to entertain ourselves.”

If eyes alone could cast spells, then Simon would have been hexed six ways past Sunday when Lorenzo glanced at him. They held curses, ancient and deadly, but they proved impotent as Lorenzo smiled through another mild-mannered apology before briskly spinning on his heel. Turning to follow him, Alec paused.

“You two should go,” he mumbled. “Magnus wouldn’t want you here.” Leilani tilted her head ponderously.

“You know Magnus?” she asked. A tendon in Alec’s neck clenched, and the rune scrawled on the skin above arched momentarily into a summit of black.

“Go,” he ordered tightly. “Now.” And then he was gone, striding into the thicket of warlocks with military precision. Honey amber trailed after him.

“Is that who I think he is, Simon?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Simon exhaled. “That’s Alec Lightwood.”

“Poor soul,” Leilani susurrated. “To apart from your conpar…” Simon thought he heard the hint of tears in her voice, but he let the idea pass over and evaporate like a wispy cloud. He had never seen Leilani cry or come remotely close. Empathetic as she was, tears never touched her, not even when they flooded Simon’s face as he woke screaming, bringing her running to his side. She would hold him pressed to her chest, cradling him as the sobs racked his entire body, letting his watery regrets soak her nightgown. But she never cried with him or for him and instead could only gaze at him kindly. Simon did not think it was that sorrow couldn’t touch her but rather that her tolerance for tragedy knew extraordinary bounds.

“He and Ja…his parabatai are apparently here as security,” Simon said, Jace’s name slipping back down his throat. 

“It is good to know that at least some precaution was taken against the trappers,” Leilani replied. 

“Still,” Simon huffed, “Lorenzo shouldn’t be having this party. He’s putting everyone at risk.”

“He means well,” she hummed. “The rumors—they’re not true. He doesn’t particularly care for Magnus, but he didn’t harm him or conspire against him. He really cares about his people, and he wants to give them hope. That’s why he threw this party.”

“He said all that?” Simon inquired dubiously. “And you believed him? He could be lying, you know.” 

“If he was lying,” she answered, smiling softly, “I would know. Lies, they are—what is the saying—fingernails on a chalkboard to my people. They are very painful to our ears. Lorenzo was telling the truth—he’s not involved in what happened to Magnus. But that—” She pointed behind them at a blue and white patterned porcelain vase of white chrysanthemums. “—most certainly was not once owned by Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. He spent fifteen minutes telling a story of how the Emperor gifted it to him, and I nearly fainted by the end.”

She brought her fingertips to her lips in an attempt to suppress a giggle, and a part of Simon relaxed immensely in relief. Lorenzo’s pomposity would not impress Leilani, couldn’t impress her, and the realization overwhelmed Simon with joyous heat. In the candlelight, the sepia of her eyes gleamed like pieces of gold, and the dazzling shimmer had Simon transfixed.

Maybe that it is why he didn’t hear the screams until they were spreading and infecting the entire salon, the wails skyrocketing in an eruption of panic. Leilani’s sepia abruptly faded to a snuffed light, as she grabbed Simon’s arm.

“The trappers,” she gasped. “They’re here.”


	10. Part I, Chapter 10: The Soullness of Men

Pandemonium had never looked prettier. Electric flares of shamrock, azure, and fuchsia rocketed into the ceiling, exploding against the crown moldings in frenzied fireworks. Instantly, Simon pulled Leilani to his chest and shielded her from the downpour of magic, the dying sparks searing stains of soot into every surface. An ember of fuchsia expired on Simon’s sleeve, charring the tawdry print at the crook of the elbow, and its final glow reflected in Leilani’s widening eyes, harvest gold illuminated as a stark, deep heather purple.

But Simon did not have time to admire or question the new hue, because suddenly there was smoke. Gluttonous, choking smoke cogged every sense, and Simon was abruptly transported back to the first moments of his afterlife, when he had awoken to grave dirt crushing him in from all sides. Tremors quaked through the earth of his body, the plates of his existence shifting and realigning. It was only the rhythm of Leilani’s quickening heartbeat that kept him grounded. That, and the heat of her breath against his neck.

“Simon,” she wheezed. “Simon, can you see anything?”

“No,” he panted. “The smoke—it’s too thic—” 

“Wait,” Leilani rasped. “There—” A magenta flash—no deeper than that, more brilliant—Simon didn’t know name for the splendid shade. It was ethereal, astounding, a color God must have saved for another world. A trellis of wisteria, a field of lavender, a violet sunset—these beautiful purples paled in comparison, and Simon couldn’t think of a singular thing of the mortal plane that came close. And as the color faded, he found himself staring into the aureate apricot irises of Leilani’s eyes. _Could it be…Leilani…_

“Look,” she directed hoarsely. She nodded forward, and Simon followed the trajectory through the smog that was now thinning. Outlines appeared, two camps squaring off taking shape in the middle of the salon. One consisted of four men, each wearing an unsettlingly familiar trench coat of army green fastened together by—Simon squinted—yes, buttons shaped like lyres. The other group of three was dressed far less dramatically in close-fitting dark clothes that could have easily been spotted on a jogger or track team. Yet, with the red logo of posed talons printed on the front of their matching jackets, theatrics would’ve been superfluous. That dreadful insignia needed no introduction. 

“Well, if it isn’t darlings of the Fenslage Company,” sneered one of the trench coats. A vaguely handsome man, he appeared to be their leader, given the way he stood in front of the other three with obvious confidence and authority. “I don’t recall inviting you to the party.”

“Ito,” bit back the tallest Fenslage. He possessed a stocky build and an inescapably noticeably long, thin scar that stretched from his left temple, over a Roman nose, to several inches beneath his right eye—perhaps the feeble retribution of one of countless victims. “As always, you and your pathetic Orpheus Group have no sense of conservation.”

“It’s bad enough you were so obviously overhunting the last couple months,” added a second male Fenlsage nasally. “But now you’ve depleted the entire vampire stock in a single morning, spooked the shifters and fairies, and warlocks? Really? They’re _untamable_ unless you catch and rise ‘em young. I mean, look at this mess!”

He threw out his arms in a sweeping motion, gesturing to the expanse of the salon, littered with the motionless bodies of warlocks. It was as if they had been stopped dead in their tracks and dropped, landing as horribly contorted marionettes, limbs bent at unnatural degrees. Not only that, but warlock marks were exposed in full view—horns, tails, extra eyes. Not far from the trappers, Simon spotted Lorenzo Rey on his back, eyes glassed over and mouth ajar in shock. A hand was splayed across his stomach, its skin no longer smooth but scaly and brownish like a gecko’s, and his legs were tangled with the very blue legs of a woman in a simple, black cocktail dress, who Simon assumed must have been Catarina Loss. Assumed because, just beyond them, lied Alec and Jace, knocked out cold. The tallest Fenslage fired a pointer finger at the pair.

“Do you know what those are, Ito?” he demanded. 

“Beetles?” Ito, shrugging, hummed. “Flies? It’s hard to tell with all that black.” His trench-coat comrades chuckled, and the Fenslage men’s scowls deepened.

“Nephilim!” the nasal-toned Fenslage snapped. “Your stupidity has attracted fuckin’ Nephilim! They’re not flies! They’re rabid dogs with a bone—they do _not_ let go.”

“Really?” Ito snorted. He briefly glanced over his shoulder. “They don’t look like much.”

“Fools’ luck.” The voice that had interjected was flat and feminine. The two male Fenslage stepped aside, permitting a slimmer figure to pass between them. In a certain light, Simon could see how some would have thought the female trapper pretty, maybe even terribly beautiful. Her rich copper brown hair cropped as a longish bob, she was curvy and compact, like a gymnast, her body clearly honed after years of training, but, at the same time, there was an eerie fragility in the sharp angles of her olive-skinned face. A cold delicateness in the startling frost blue of her eyes.

“They were hit by a stray bolt of magic,” she went on. “Trust me, had it missed, you’d be the ones on the floor.”

“Keren Fenslage,” Ito greeted, a lustful glint igniting in his dark gaze. “So Daddy Fenslage is pulling out the big guns, is he? He must be pretty desperate if he’s sending in his precious little girl.”

Precious little girl? Simon bemused grimly as the infamous name registered in his mind. There was not one damn thing precious about Keren “the Frigid Flame” Fenslage, the heir apparent to her family’s dynasty of terror.

“The only one desperate here,” Keren, non-pulsed, said, “is you, Aaron Ito. Let’s review, shall we? You’ve bagged millions worth of game in a very short span of time. Most companies would’ve taken a nice long break, but the Orpheus Group keeps hunting. No pacing or strategy, just bagging and tagging, selling your gains at prices that undercut the value of the entire market. And, just when I think it isn’t humanly possible, you get sloppier. Two of your men are rotting in a vampire den, one that could have been very profitable if managed properly, and now we are here, standing in the biggest clusterfuck I’ve ever seen.”

“Clusterfuck?” Ito growled incredulously. “Looks damn successful to me!”

“Really?” Keren replied, arching a fine eyebrow. “In what fantasy world? Warlocks are money-pits and a waste of resources and energy. They can’t be controlled without cutting off the one thing that makes them desirable to own. Werewolves, there’s silver collars. Fairies, iron chains. Vampires, hell, all you need is sacred ground or daylight. Keeps them in check without losing any of the bells and whistles.

But Warlocks? There’s only druid’s glass, because of its tendency to disrupt ley lines and, therefore, magic. But it’s a bitch to find and even a bigger bitch to control or predict—especially when you pack it into a bomb and detonate it over a ballroom. Too little, and you have a pissed off warlock. Enough or too much, doesn’t matter, you get the same result—a doped bore-fest.” She shoved the toe of her black combat boot at the nearest body. “See? Not even twitch. I’d rather own a goldfish. At least that moves.”

“What a load of bull!” Ito seethed. “Wasn’t it just two weeks ago you caged a warlock yourself, Fenslage? You then sold it to one of _my_ clients. Well not this time around! I’m not letting you muscle in on my territory again!” The temperature of Keren’s blues plummeted, as a glacier grin crept over her lips.

“So that’s what this is all about,” she said coolly. “You still haven’t caught on? Oh, that’s tragic.” With a predator’s grace, she started to slink closer to Ito, gingerly stepping over the catatonic bodies between them. “I didn’t poach your precious sponsor, Ito. He came to my father to make a special request, because he wanted someone with competence and ability. Did you honestly think that was you and Orpheus Group? Please. He wanted you only for one thing, and he got it, I hear, at a bargain. Didn’t even twice think about selling the family jewels, did you, Ito? Didn’t wonder for a second why someone would want them or why the _Tenshi no Namida_ might be valuable.”

Keren and Ito were nearly nose to nose now. He straightened his spine, gaining an inch over her, but her icicle blue merely grew colder as she smirked viciously. 

“You’ve been running around the last few days trying to find your sponsor’s lost pet,” she drawled. “I bet you’ve dreaming about getting the reward, both the bounty and some respect. That was the plan, wasn’t it? …When you let Magnus Bane out of his cage.” The color drained from Ito’s face, sucked into the vacuum of horror. Keren took another, solid step forward, and he stumbled back.

“You probably thought he’d be easy to catch,” she continued. “But he got away, and you’ve been trying to clean up your mess ever since, flaying for any life line, flinging over every rock, making a bigger and bigger mess. No real plan. No forethought. Just flying by the seat of your pants and making it up as you go. I cannot _stand_ fools like you.”

“…Can you really blame a guy for trying?” Ito tried with a hesitant simper. “We’re all in it for the money, right? Isn’t that why you and Tweedledee and Tweedleum are here? For the bounty?”

“Oh no,” Keren demurred as her kinsmen laughed humorlessly behind her. “It’s utterly idiotic to think Magnus would come here, even with his mate present. If he was going to his mate, he would have done it already, and we’ve had eyes on the mate this entire time.”

“M-Mate?” one of the other trench coats echoed, fiddling with a lyre button. “What—”

“Dear God,” groaned the scared-face Fenslage. “Your stupidity is suffocating.”

“An ailment we were offered a very generous sum to cure,” Keren mused. “But, like I told your sponsor, Ito, this one’s on the house.”

Her fist flew up in a charging uppercut, and a nauseating crunch of bone reverberated throughout room as Ito’s head snapped back, it’s chin hit dead on. Red spittle erupted from between his grimacing lips, and before the drops of blood hit the back of a warlock with lime green tresses, the brawl was on.

“They can’t see us.” It wasn’t a question but a simple observation. Not once through the whole exchange had one trapper glance even accidentally in Leilani and Simon’s direction, which Simon couldn’t quite comprehend. Besides the trappers, they were the only ones upright in the whole salon. They should have stuck out like the two healthy stalks of corn in a field of brown husks.

“The smoke on this side of the room hasn’t cleared yet,” Leilani replied, pulling apart from Simon’s embrace. There was an edge to her voice—a hardness Simon had never heard her use before. His forehead creased.

“What do you mean? I can see just fine.”

“Druid’s glass…you can see through it…if you know how…”

“See through it if you know how… Wait, the purplish light? Is that why? …Leilani?” But Leilani was not paying attention to him. Instead, she had walked over to the not-Qing Dynasty vase, or rather, what was left of it and its pedestal, pulverized porcelain and marble. She outstretched her hands palms up, and the remnants of chrysanthemums began to rise, the slender white petals riding an unseen breeze. Piece by piece, a flower resembled at the heart of each hand until it looked as if it had budded and bloomed a new. 

Slowly, Leilani rotated back around, the tulle of her skirt rustling quietly. The spinel adorning her neck sparkled, giving her molten honey eyes a scintillating violet shine. Simon’s chest clenched.

“Leilani…” Saying nothing, she took measured steps toward the battling trappers, and the breeze about her grew stronger, lifting her curls and dress in wafting billows of glossy onyx and glittering peach. As she passed him, Simon suddenly knew. Suddenly knew that, although she had come unglamored, Leilani was now shedding a disguise, or at least part of it. He knew that in this very moment, he was seeing a truer visage of her. One of greater beauty yet.

And one of even greater power.

To Keren Fenslage, she appeared gloriously out of the smoke as a wingless angel, all soft gold and jewel purple. The collar of Ito’s ridiculous trademark trench coat slipped from her grasp, as they all froze, paralyzed by the sublime amber of her eyes. Or was it violet? It was too hard to be sure in the wavering light.

“W-what is that?” Ito managed to sputter through swollen lips, cheek, and jaw. “…Warlock?”

“Can’t be,” Keren heard her cousin Benedict answer distantly in a reedy voice. “The druid’s glass would’ve knocked her out.”

“Then what?” Ito screeched panickily. “What is that?”

“What…” the angel murmured. She sounded like spring rain. Cold, forlorn. “…It… Stock… You speak of those of human blood as if they were dogs or cattle.”

“Human?” Keren’s brother, Ephraim, jeered. His scar, a souvenir from his first hunt, shrunk as he scowled. “The beasts are nothing like us.”

“Those you chain and cage are counted in heaven’s number,” the angel said, “a crime for which you will pay a heavy toll.”

“Is that your way of saying you’ll get your revenge?” Ephraim sneered, and a remote part of Keren wanted to tell him to shut up. But the angel’s eyes met hers, and she was struck dumb. Gold—violet—stripped her bare. _She can see_ , Keren, mortified, realized. _She can see everything. She can see me…_

“To play God invites the devil in,” the angel murmured like a tired truism. “I need not act, for all we sow comes back to us sevenfold.” She looked deliberately at Ito. “Dishonor.” To Ephraim. “Depravity.” Back to Keren. Painfully, unbearably back to Keren. “Duplicity.” 

Keren’s bones burned. She couldn’t hide, not under the purview of gold. No, violet. No, deeper than that. Deeper, and more brilliant.

The angel raised her palms, each cradling a pearly, plump chrysanthemum, and the breeze attending her accelerated into a tempest gale, sending her gown and spiral curls flying back. Keren threw up her forearms in front of her face, crisscrossing them at the wrists as a shield. Her eyes narrowed, not quite able to tear away from the apricot and amethyst vision. 

“The soullness of men,” the angel said, “is always paid for sevenfold.” The chrysanthemums broke, splintering into floral shards that suddenly filled the atmosphere like a blizzard. The flurry of petals surged, and the slivers of tender white sliced the skin of Keren’s arms, painting thin lines of red into light olive. 

Fleetingly, Keren wondered how something so delicate could pierce so sharply and rip her clean apart at the seams.


	11. Part II, Chapter 1: Enemy of My Enemy

Part Two: No Folly of the Beast

_“For there is no folly of the Beast of the earth which_

_is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men”_

_-Herman Melville_

Enemy of My Enemy

Chrysanthemum petals fell around Leilani as snow, dusting everything but her. Her breezes, which just seconds before had howled at the fever pitch of a hurricane, expired as whimpers, disappearing into nothingness like the air in an exhausted exhale. She stood perfectly still, and an uneasy quiet settled in, the humidity zapped out of the room, gone with the fleeing trappers and the stormy chaos they had exacted. Simon approached her slowly from behind, carefully maneuvering around the warlocks, still frozen like broken, abandoned dolls.

“…Leilani?” he called worriedly. She remained mute and unflinching. He extended a hand, fingers hesitating midair before grazing the copper skin of her bare shoulder. 

“Leilani,” he tried again. The petite shell of her ear led as her head turned listlessly toward him. Her eyes were amber again, a mellifluous aurum, but she wasn’t in them. The familiar twinkle of time-travel had glossed them over, and she was miles down the winding path of the past. His fingertips pressing into her flesh, Simon shook her anxiously.

“ _Leilani_.” A single blink of long dark eyelashes, and she returned like a shock of sun bursting into life and color on the horizon.

“Simon,” she said nearly voicelessly, “are you alright?”

“That’s my line,” he replied. “Are _you_ okay? What just happened?”

“A choice bearing fruit.” Leilani did not expand upon her cryptic answer. Instead, she moved nimbly past Simon, tulle and chiffon flouncing as she jogged to where Alec laid half on his stomach, his cheek pillowed on the unsympathetic hardwood floor. Kneeling, she rolled him onto his back and brushed greasy strands of black hair from his forehead, sheened over with sweat.

“Simon, do have you it?” she asked.

“It? –Oh, yeah.” He slipped a hand beneath his lapel, and, groping for the jacket’s inside pocket, he found lightweight chain and grasped it. Retracting his hand, he held out the chain, simple silver dangling from his grip, mildly swayed by the medallion from that hung from it. Within the pendant’s dome center were petals painted red at their edges, blush pink in their middle, and dove white at their converging center. Thanks to Danny, the Vow Rose had been preserved in an ice crystal that no ordinary heat could melt, protecting it from the wear of travel. Simon, never knowing when the opportunity to pass it on to its intended recipient would arise, had kept it on his person at all times since the night Leilani first entrusted him with the precious bloom.

“Here,” he said as he too drew near Alec but only close enough so he could extend his arm and hold the necklace within Leilani’s reach. She took the medallion and fluidly slipped its chain over Alec’s head, arranging it so the pendant sat squarely over his heart.

“There,” she murmured to Alec. “I know it it’s hardly any consolation, but here is a small boon for your pain. Your _conpar_ is alive, and we’ll protect him until it is safe for you to reunite.” She combed more of Alec’s limp bangs to the side, fingers lingering in the black tangles.

“…I am so sorry,” she added mutedly. “Hadn’t it not been for me…” She trailed off, and Simon could see her beginning to drift again, memories swelling once more in the gold of her eyes. He dared another step forward and started to reach for her. _We need to go_ , he thought urgently. Every second they stayed was a risky gamble they couldn’t afford to lose. Who knew how long the druid glass would pollute the air, keeping the surrounding warlocks docile and harmless? And what if the trappers circled back, reinforcements in tow? No, time was too precious to waste. As much as Simon yearn to follow Leilani down that road—as much as he agonizingly craved to consume the secrets she only shared in pieces—this was not the time nor place.

“Leilani—”

“He has no bow or arrows,” she said suddenly. Amber scrutinized Alec and then the areas nearest. Coming up empty, she twisted around to look at Simon worriedly. “If he was here as a bodyguard, shouldn’t he have his weapons with him?”

“Rey didn’t let us bring them. He said our presence was overkill as it was and that he’d let us through the door only if we left our ‘pointy toys’ at home.” Later, Simon would applaud himself for how stoic he remained as Jace staggered to his feet, but in the moment, he could only feel the tidal wave that rammed into his heart. Jace’s vehement scowl drilled a gaping hole into Simon’s chest, but it wasn’t fear that pried open his rib cage. It was a sensation, rather, that was difficult to name. A strangely flavored pain.

 _That’s how you should have looked at me back then,_ Simon mused minutely. _When I almost drained you dry…instead of calling my name…instead of calling me back…you should have looked at me like that…_

“But make no mistake,” Jace spat, “blade or no blade, I can take you both down. So step the hell away from my parabatai!” 

“Brave words,” Simon replied, slipping into the protective persona of Castor Bleu, “…but something tells me you wouldn’t be able to deliver if I held you to them.”

“Bastard!” Jace hissed through gritted teeth. “Catarina was right—you’re no novice.”

“ _Au contraire_ —a novice is defined as someone under forty, and I still have a few decades to go before I’m over the hill.”

“Shut up!” Jace fumed, inching a hair forward. “You know what I mean, you son of a bitch!”

“Hmm,” Simon sighed in concession. “I do. But I’m afraid I’m not feeling too cooperative right now. You did call me ‘snake face’ not too long ago—that was hurtful.”

“Come closer. I’ll show you just how _hurtful_ I can be.” Simon feigned a pondering gaze.

“…Ok then.” In the length of a finger snap, he dashed forward, halting nose to nose with Jace, who stumbled back two steps before recovering his ground in an agile, incensed leap. But Simon was ready and effortlessly sidestepped him before seizing Jace around his upper torso and pulling him flush with Simon’s chest. Jace instantly began to struggle, squirming and jerking zealously, yet his weak kicks and bumps didn’t put a dent in the binding of Simon’s arm. 

“Aargh!” he bellowed, throwing his skull back in a fervid headbutt. Simon merely tilted his head to the left, and Jace’s collided sharply with Simon’s shoulder, elongating his alabaster neck. Reflexively, Simon’s hand rose in a lightning strike, grasping Jace’s throat where jaw met neck to keep the carotid artery clear and exposed. He involuntarily homed in on the pulse reverberating just under that expanse of unsoiled skin. The roar of rushing, fresh blood resonated alluringly in Simon’s ears, and his fangs extended, dripping poisoned salvia. 

Simon’s been here before—been here almost every night. He knew how horrifyingly it would end—scarlet spilling from severed veins and staining a soul beyond salvation—yet he couldn’t stop his lips from diving a little lower. _Lower…_ It would all be alright in the morning. He would awake as the sun’s newborn rays kissed his eyelids open and would be unsullied. _Lower…_ It would all be right. This was just a nightmare. A vengeful, haunting memory. _Lower…_

“Castor!” It was not the name that brought him back to reality’s realm. Leilani could’ve said anything, could’ve uttered any sound, and he would’ve heard the concern in her call. The disquiet in her usually undisturbed, gentle voice. Simon looked up to find her standing, the amber of her eyes a golden beacon, just as they had been the day he first saw them on a beach at dawn.

“Castor,” she called again. “We should go. The druid’s glass is dispersing—the warlocks will recover soon…” Sure enough, a couple feet away, Lorenzo Rey’s fingers twitched, flexing slightly as their nerves started to re-light and re-fire. The weight of ticking time avalanched over Simon again, but he did not release Jace quite yet. Instead, he lifted his lips to Jace’s ear.

“We both know I could kill you right now,” he whispered. “A little more pressure or a flick of the wrist, and you’d be dead.” Jace’s muscles stiffed to stone, as an impassive shadow glided over his face and settled there into the shell of a solider dignifiedly waiting for his death blow.

“But I’m not going to kill you,” Simon went on. “I could, but I won’t. Because, as I told Ms. Loss, we are on the same side, and I don’t kill my allies.”

“Allies?” Jace repeated, snorting. “Allies trust each other, and I’m struggling to find anything trustworthy about you, _snake face_.”

“Fair enough,” Simon agreed, grinning hollowly. “But I am the enemy of your enemy—and believe me, Jace—the trappers are your real enemy.”

“Trappers? And how do you know my name? I don’t remember exchanging pleasantries.”

“Trappers making their living hunting and selling downworlders to the highest bidder,” Simon explained, while, inwardly, he cursed the familiarity with which he had utter Jace’s name. “They’re mundanes, but don’t underestimate them. They count on that, and they only need a couple seconds to pen you in. They’re behind all the disappearances, including Magnus.” Beneath Simon’s hand, Jace’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

“If…” Jace muttered. “If you’re telling the truth, then let me go. Let me go, and let’s talk it like adults. Like allies.” His blue eye peered at Simon as best it could without the luxury of neck rotation, but then it stole a quick glance at a point just beyond Simon, so Simon’s gaze darted in the same direction. Lorenzo’s fingers, in mid-flex, were emitting orange sparks.

“They’ve been watching you,” Simon warned. “Specifically, your parabatai. So stay vigilant, shadowhunter, and don’t lose sight of the real foe.”

Releasing Jace, he flash-stepped to Leilani, hoisting her up into a bridal hold, and her slims arms immediately wrapped his neck, her warmth pressing into the constantly chilled nape of his neck. Once she was secured, Simon sprinted as fast as his demonic speed could propel him, and the orange orb of livid magic Lorenzo fired after them didn’t even have a shadow to chase.

“That has to be, hands down,” Brielle drawled, “the dumbest idea I have ever heard. And I was there when you tried putting the moves on a troll. Not a euphemism—an actual troll.”

“First of all,” Samir snapped, “I was high as a kite that night thanks to _somebody_ spiking my ice tea with a hallucinogen!” He glowered briefly at Felix, who was unflappably cutting his brunch ham.

“You ruined my whole supplies of pixie wings with one of your half-baked pranks,” Felix murmured. “I was simply evening the score.”

“How is getting me almost date raped evening the score!”

“Please,” Noelle chimed in. “Your virtue was hardly in jeopardy. You weren’t exactly the troll’s type. She had higher standards.”

“Second of all,” Samir steamed, visibly suppressing a comeback, “you got a better idea, antler for brains? Finding ‘Violet Dawn’ and ‘Castor Bleu’ is the shadowhunters’ one and only goal right now. That makes Leilani and Simon the perfect bait. One sighting of them will have Lightwood come running, arrows ablazin’.”

“One,” Brielle said as she picked up a butter knife and jabbed it threateningly at Samir’s forehead, “call me ‘antler-for-brains’ again, and _your_ brains will be my new marmalade of choice. Two, it’s not just shadowhunters looking Leilani and Simon—it’s the whole freakin’ Downworld, plus a double helping of trapper. What you’re suggesting is a suicide mission! There has to be an option that doesn’t paint a gigantic target sign on their backs! We’d be better off breaking into the Institute and stealing the arrows!”

“Actually,” Sage weighed in, tapping her chin, “that’s not a bad idea—breaking into the Institute.” Baby blues going wide as teacup saucers, Brielle whipped her head as briskly as a twig snapping in half.

“Redford, that is a _terrible_ joke.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Well, I was. See, there’s this wonderful little thing called ‘sarcasm.’ Ever heard of it? Obviously not. I recommend you pull out a dictionary and look it up.”

“I agree with Sage,” Danny, lazily stirring his Fruit Loops with his spoon, said abruptly. Beside him, Felix’s fork, spearing a lopsided square of ham and halfway to Felix’s mouth, stilled.

“You _do_?” Felix queried.

“Think it about it seriously,” Danny answered calmly. “No one would be expecting it. We’d have the advantage of surprise. And it would be way easier to control the situation. Like Brielle said, if we just send Simon and Leilani out into the open, there’s no saying who would show up first. Breaking into the Institute dramatically increases our chances of finding Lightwood and his arrows.”

“Oh yeah,” Brielle scoffed, “it’ll be tons easier. Mostly because his arrows will be sticking out of our asses, assuming, of course, that the seraph blades don’t get to us first. The Institute is the hive of all shadowhunters in the city, and to put it metaphorically, why in the hell would we run into the swarm?”

“We don’t have time to craft the perfect plan,” Danny argued. His starkly solid white eyes rose from his bowl and effortlessly found Brielle on the other side of the table. “We’re almost halfway through the week. We just need a plan that is good enough.”

“I’m not aiming for perfection here,” Brielle said. “Just a plan in which the chances that we’ll die are reasonably low.”

“Not so sure that boat didn’t sail eons ago,” Sage considered aloud. “Am I the only one who remembers that it was Circle members chasing after Magnus in that alley? The sponsor for Orpheus Group? Smart money says it’s Valentine Morgensteen.”

“Valentine?” Samir repeated. “No way—this Aaron Ito guy sounds like he’s stupid enough to get bed in with shadowhunters, but the Fenslage aren’t. Who’s to say that the Circle didn’t just happen to run into Magnus while he was making his getaway and decided to take advantage of the situation? The Fenslage steer clear of shadowhunters at all costs! They’re too smart not to!”

“Three nights ago, we also all agreed they were too smart to go after a High Warlock,” Sage countered, “but, according to Simon and Leilani, they accepted a commission to catch one. Obviously, we’ve given their intelligence too much credit. Besides, it’s extremely possible that they don’t know who exactly they’re dealing with. It would hardly be the first time Valentine lied about who he was.” Brown eyes blowing wide, Samir started to push away his plate of graying eggs and cold toast.

“But,” he muttered. “But…no…that doesn’t make any sense—”

“‘We paid a pretty penny for him. Wanna see the receipt?’” Brielle suddenly droned.

“Huh?” Samir whined.

“The Circle bitch that Leilani made into skewer meat,” she explained satirically, “that’s what she said. ‘We paid a pretty penny for him.’ That’s what tipped Simon off in the first place that trappers were involved in this mess…”

“There was nothing serendipitous about the Circle being in that alley,” Sage asserted again as Brielle trailed off. “Valentine, in some way or another, approached the Fenslage clan and made them an offer enticing enough to go after a High Warlock, because Jang-mi was right. Of all the trappers in the city, only a Fenslage has a shot in hell at getting the job done.”

At the far end of the table, Jang-mi sat perfectly poised, ivory hands folded atop her flower printed skirt. Her face could not be seen, not behind her long veil of black hair.

“Then why bother at all with Orpheus Group?” Samir cried. “From what Simon said, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Their leader had something Valentine wanted.” All eyes swung to where Simon stood in the doorway. He had been standing there awhile, listening to the brunch debate over strategy and next steps but had been unable to muster the energy needed to properly announce himself when the conversation swerved toward the Institute. The Institute—the grave of his former himself. The tomb of his past life. The home of everything he wanted to forget. And, Simon knew deep down, the only logical option left.

“ _Tenshi no Namida_ ,” he continued hoarsely. “That’s what Keren Fenslage said Ito’s sponsor wanted. She called it his family jewels.”

“ _Tenshi no Namida_ ,” Danny echoed. “It means ‘angel tears’ in Japanese.”

“Angel tears? That’s a stupid name for anything. Angels don’t cry,” Samir scoffed before pursuing his lips in reconsideration. “…do they?” 

“Who knows, marmalade brains?” Brielle sighed, propping her chin up on the hollow of her curved palm. “That’s a question better suited for a Nephillim.”

“Or a druid,” Felix added over Samir’s indignant squawk.

“I’ll go ask Mr. O’Keefe then,” Simon said. Numbly, he begun to turn away, but the soft scrapping of wood against carpet prompted him to pause as Noelle scooted her chair away from the table and stood.

“Simon, wait,” she called, approaching him. “You should eat something. You haven’t had anything to drink in over a day. Eshana picked up some O neg from Winston’s for you this morning. Come, sit down for a little bit and eat. You’re going to need your strength.” Simon smiled tiredly.

“In a little while, Noelle. I promise.”

“Simon—” But he was already leaving, speeding through the foray and out the front door. Still, Felix’s voice nipped at his heels. 

“Let him go, Noelle,” he said. “He needs his space. Last night, he had to look his worst trespass in the face.”


	12. Part II, Chapter 2: Sins of the Brother

Every morning, weather permitting, Mr. O’Keefe would take Sophelia for a walk. Well, it was for a walk for him. For Sophelia, it was a flight. Above the miniature woods of pines, beech trees, and maples nestled behind the manor, the little girl would soar, her little arms having shed human skin for feathers of an iridescent myriad of colors. Simon had tried thinking of a bird whose wings came close to the rainbow pattern, whose colors were a quarter as bright as Sophelia’s candy apple red, sunrise yellow, tropic green, fluorescent blue, and tiger lily orange, but he could only come up with woefully inadequate comparisons like the macaw or painted bunting. If there was a name for Sophelia and her variegated wings, Simon didn’t know it, but the child was not unique in this regard. The same mystic aura was embedded deep in Leilani’s almond eyes of amber and amethyst. 

Mr. O’Keefe, on the other hand, did not indulge in mystery. He was a quietly forthright man, unassuming in the way of someone who had long outgrown pomp and pride, and he answered questions earnestly if asked. It’s just that his tenants seldom asked, because even with their landlord, the house rule still stood—never breech the topic of Before.

“Lovely morning, isn’t Simon?” Mr. O’Keefe chirped as Simon entered the tiny clearing. He was resting on a low stone bench, placed in the opening within the copse’s center for the very purpose of being a destination for the morning strolls. The patch of clear sky overhead allowed for both an uninhibited view of Sophelia gliding and for thick streams of sunlight to keep Mr. O’Keefe comfortable as he waited for the little girl to tire. Simon usually liked coming here to bask in his daylighter status and soak in the rays that would flay his like alive, but, today, he found no novelty in the sun’s touch.

“Good morning, Mr. O’Keefe,” Simon murmured. Mr. O’Keefe smiled knowingly.

“Someday,” he said, “you must tell me how you did it.”

“Did what?”

“Get out of the house without eating a single bite,” Mr. O’Keefe replied. “I tried to skip out on breakfast once. Eshana had me in her coils before I got twenty feet from the door, and she lectured me for a whole hour about the importance of breakfast while she forced fed me two helpings of oatmeal.” He reached for something beside him, and when he held it out, Simon saw that it was a bag of dark ruby red.

“Here,” Mr. O’Keefe offered. “To save you from a similar fate. Eshana’s methods might be extreme, but she isn’t wrong. Breakfast is important, especially when every ounce of energy counts.” 

“Did Sophelia tell you I’d need this?” Simon asked with a grateful grin as he took the bag. Mr. O’Keefe nodded.

“Aye,” he confirmed. “She also told me you’d be coming to ask if angels cry.” Smirking, Simon sat down on the bench next Mr. O’Keefe and stretched out his legs into the tall grass, a patch work of invading autumn and fleeing summer. 

“Felix said it’s a question better suited for a druid.”

“It is the kind of question druids love. If only I was actually a druid. Felix knows very well I never finished my apprenticeship.” A lull of silence floated between them, as Simon twisted open one of the bag’s tubes, and, raising it to his lips, he gave a lazy suck, the coppery flavor washing over his tongue in a gory flood. His stomach cramped in anxious gratitude.

“Felix told me you only had one test left,” Simon said once he had swallowed.

“One test,” Mr. O’Keefe sighed, “can make all the difference, Simon. I would be a very different man had I passed, but, thank goodness, I did not. There’s so much I would have missed out on. Raising Sophelia, most of all, of course, but also you and the others. Such wonderful, beautiful souls, all of you. I only wish you all could see your beauty the way I do.” Simon lowered the blood bag, and, in his hands, it felt heavy and damning.

“There’s nothing beautiful about me,” he said.

“Leilani seems to think so,” Mr. O’Keefe gently argued, and Simon snorted.

“Leilani sees in good in everyone.”

“She sees what there is to see, our Leilani, and she sees it for what it is. And while she can grow just about anything in even the most barren wasteland, she cannot conjure goodness where none existed. She told me as much once.”

“She did?” Simon asked, curiosity stirring like a lion roused from sleep by hunger.

“Yes,” Mr. O’Keefe mused. The corners of his lips dipped in nostalgia as they quirked up into a reminiscing smile. “It was about, oh, seven, eight years ago. You can’t tell by looking at me now, but back then, I was a much, much younger man. See, druids and their apprentices have more youth to spend than the normal human, and I spent it like I would always have it, never questioning the cost. Never wondering where all that youth came from. But then, as I faced my final test, I couldn’t remain ignorant any longer. And I had to choose the kind of soul I wanted to possess.”

He paused, drawing in a slow, ambling breath. The crinkles around the crevices of his eyes folded and rearranged themselves, as his gray eyes looked upward to the crescent of cerulean just in time to watch Sophelia delight in a wide, aerial spin.

“The choice I made,” he continued, “required me leaving my guild, and, well, you don’t just leave a guild. As far as they’re concerned, once you’re in, you’re in, especially when you’ve been in as long as I was. The knowledge, the secrets, the magic I knew—that was only for the guild to know, and if I wasn’t part of the guild…” Another pause, longer and gloomier than the first. “…Men I called ‘brother’ for half a century spat and cursed at me. They came for me with spells and knives to deprive me of my knowledge and my life.

So I ran. Little baby Sophelia in my arms and my real age coming upon me with a vengeance, I ran and ran until my bones, newly old, couldn’t bear to run anymore. And so, with the wolves closing in, I started to chant, to pray—to beg. To this day, I don’t know exactly what I said. The chant was something I vaguely remembered learning from the guild’s oldest book. It was in Gaelic so ancient that I hardly knew what most of it meant, except one tiny little line— _t_ _rócaire, bláth síoraí, fás, fás_.”

“…What does that mean?” Mr. O’Keefe turned to gaze at Simon, and his gray eyes lightened in a ribbon of sunlight.

“It means, ‘mercy, eternal flower, grow, grow.’ I said that over and over and over. Then, she appeared—Leilani. She came like a lightning strike of spring in the middle of winter. All of sudden, snow melted, and this old, dead tree—a laburnum, I think—came alive. The greenest leaves sprouted, and flower chains so yellow that they were almost gold burst from its branches. And she was there, high in the tree. She looked down at me, and I knew at once she saw everything. Everything I had done and everything I failed to do. She could see the price of the youth I spent so carelessly, and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve mercy.’ But then, do you know what she said?” 

Simon shook his head shallowly, while, in his mind’s eye, he pictured Leilani perched in boughs of gold, her honey amber eyes peering down at an aging, desperate man, his arms heavy, full with a child and regret, and measuring his quality. He then envisioned her on the riverfront, her eyes twice as golden filled to the brim with dawn. He remembered thinking she was a seraph of mercy, come to bring him a final moment of serenity. Was it then, as he waited for blissful death to claim him, that she had observed his innermost self? Could she see it still with every glance she bestowed upon him? Did she really see something worthwhile in him, a glorified corpse?

Mr. O’Keefe spoke.

“She said, ‘Druid, you call for me, but you have already saved yourself.’” Simon’s confusion dug grooves into his forehead, and Mr. O’Keefe laughed jovially.

“That is the very same look I had,” he sighed after his laughter subsided. “It took me a good while to figure out what she meant. Give it time, Simon, and you’ll see what she sees.”

Simon, no more enlightened, opened his mouth to press deeper, but a shadow fell over them, as a tiny body, hovering ten feet from the ground, blocked out the gleaming white orb of the sun.

“Done already, love?” Mr. O’Keefe asked Sophelia, who, flapping her wings in rainbow waves, gave an adorable but troubling frown.

“We need to go back,” she announced. “Something bad is about to happen.”

“Something bad,” Simon deduced, was Joshua Begay. More precisely, it was Joshua Begay crashing through a second-floor window. Amidst a hail of jagged glass, his body arched in a crude parabola, descended rapidly like a failing rocket, and then plowed into the lawn, narrowly missing the concrete of the front driveway. He tumbled four full rolls before he came to a jolting halt thanks to Simon’s foot. Simon shifted his weight so he could push maximum pressure against Joshua’s chest, and Joshua visibly sank a few inches deeper into the ground, the dirt and grass concaving around and beneath him.

“Dude,” Simon hissed, “did you get sick of wrestling tables and decide to give windows a try?” Joshua coughed roughly, spitting up a furball of grass blades and bits of leaves.

“Nice to see you too, Daylighter,” he rasped. “You sure know to roll out the welcome mat.”

“Welcome mat?” Simon said, snorting. “Man, you really must have hit your head hard on the way down.”

“Pity the fall didn’t kill him.” Brielle’s voice carried the chill of an apocalyptic blizzard as she, flanked closely by Felix and Noelle, came striding across the lawn. The red flickers at her antler points had completely died out, which meant she was probably feeling peckish. And a peckish Brielle was a distinctly vicious Brielle.

“Idiot was creeping about the house,” Noelle snipped. A grimacing grin framed in her pike teeth, and the start of a shrill coursed beneath her words—the undercurrent of a deadly hymn waiting to bubble to life. “He was using his old tricks, but Eshana sniffed him right out.”

“And sent him right on his way,” Felix added. He adjusted his glasses and then flexed his fingers, cobalt magic sparking in popping, electric bursts. 

“Can’t say I missed her crazy,” Joshua wheezed. “But gotta give props were props is due—she’s one hell of a guard dog.”

“You’ve got some fucking nerve, Begay,” Brielle snapped. “Showing your face here? There are far less painful ways to die.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Joshua attempted to joke as he struggled to produce a semper. “I came to offer a business proposition.”

“Simon’s right,” Brielle scoffed. “You most definitely hit your head if you really believe we’d believe anything that comes out of your mouth, let alone a make deal. A deal with you is a deal with the devil.”

“Funny you should put it that way,” Joshua sighed humorlessly. “Ironic, really.”

“Ironic?” Noelle, befuddled, repeated. “How so?”

“Forget it. He’s just spouting off bullshit,” Brielle cut in. Her hard blues pivoted past Simon to Mr. O’Keefe. “Old man, you oughta take the kid inside.” Mr. O’Keefe glanced down somberly at Joshua and then looked back up as he began to wring his knobby fingers.

“Surely,” he said, “There’s another way—”

“Peter,” Felix interrupted. “Go. …Please.” Mr. O’Keefe did not protest after that. Instead, he scooped Sophelia up in his arms and wobbled along the driveway. Sophelia was silent as they went, her grey irises flashing a spectrum of color whilst peering over her grandfather’s shoulder.

“Now,” Brielle said once they were out of earshot. “Let’s get this over with. We’ve got better things to do.”

“Like storming the Institute,” Joshua replied. “I can help with that.” So he had been spying at least since brunch. That meant he probably knew why infiltrating the Institute had been proposed in the first place, Simon realized. He hankered down on his weight even more, and Joshua gasped instantly, desperately trying to suck in what little bits of air he could.

“Let him up, Simon.” Sage stood apart from Brielle and the others, but her emerald stare was no kinder. 

“He knows,” Simon answered. “And from what I hear, he’s not exactly friend of the year.”

“He’ll sell us out at the first opportunity,” Brielle agreed. “He can’t be trusted to breathe, let alone walk away. Simon’s not beholden to the stupid promise. If he wants to snap the son of bitch’s neck in half, he’s free to do so. In fact, it’s a certifiable miracle he’s still alive. If Samir wasn’t so preoccupied with Jang-mi, Wile E. Coyote here would be flattened under an anvil by now. ”

“I didn’t say anything about letting him walk away,” Sage clarified. “I just said ‘let him up.’ Let him up, Simon. I’ll take care of it from here.”

The wind picked up, combing through Sage’s platinum waves and blowing a few pale strands into her eyes, but she didn’t blink. She waited with the grisly silence of an executioner as Simon eased his foot off of Joshua and stepped back. Waited as Joshua sputtered and gobbled down oxygen. Waited as he rolled stiffly to his side and then pushed himself up with the rickety, shaking movements of someone way more advanced in age.

“S-sage…” he whined. “Sage—”

“You don’t get to say my name,” she clipped. “You lost that privilege. Just as you lost the privilege to be in my presence. To be in my home. And I warned you, didn’t I? That if you ever came near me again, it would be the last thing you ever do. Because I’d kill you.”

“Yeah,” Joshua huffed cheekily. “That rings a bell.”

“You still dare to return. I can only assume that means you want to die.”

“No,” Joshua denied, fervently shaking his head. “It means I need your help. And you need mine.” Brielle gave a loud, incredulous squawking laugh, and Joshua gritted his teeth. “I’m telling the truth!”  
“The truth?” Brielle uttered like she had the misfortune to taste something sour. “Give it up, Begay. We all know now that you’re only _half_ -fey, so you can lie outright as much as the day is long. I don’t get fooled twice, because you’re dead man walking after you fool me once.”

“Go get Leilani if you don’t believe me!” Joshua cried. “She’s practically a walking lie detector! She’ll verify I’m telling the truth.”

“No need to waste her time,” Felix drawled. “Besides, no one’s seen her this morning. She might not even be up. We’re not dragging her out of bed for your sake.”

“Oh, she’s up,” Joshua spat. “She’s with the warlock you got squirrelled away in the North Turret—Magnus Bane.”

“Ok Sage,” Brielle sneered. “I think we’ve heard enough.”

“Agreed,” Sage said. She raised her right hand, fingernails lengthening to into dagger claws. Her viridian magic ignited between the webbing of her fingers and quickly roared into a foaming, ferocious flame. Begay had the good sense to look terrified.

“Wait, wait!” he shouted. “I’m not after Bane! I told you—I can help you get what he needs! All I want is a little quid quo pro! Honest!”

“ ‘Honest’?” Sage echoed mirthlessly. “Of all the times I imagined this moment, that was never your last word. There’s not an honest thing about you, Joshua Begay.” Sage threw her burning claws up and back, like a pitcher winding up a fastball, and as she hurled her release, Joshua flung out one final plea.

“Ruth!” he screamed. “It’s Ruth, Sage!” The ball of emerald fire, mere millimeters from Joshua’s flat nose, evaporated instantly, ascending in wispy, greenish smoke. 

“…What about her?” Sage demanded lowly. 

“She’s cursed,” Joshua answered breathlessly. “Because of me, she’s cursed, and if I don’t fix it, she’ll die.”

“Who the hell is Ruth?” Brielle barked. “And why the hell do we care?” Sage visibly drew in a deep breath, her generous bosom raising with the expansion of her lungs.

“Ruth,” she said on the exhale, “is Joshua’s younger sister.”

“She’s innocent,” Joshua tacked on anxiously. “She shouldn’t have to pay for the sins of her brother.” Felix cocked his head and peered over the rims of his glasses.

“And quite the sin it was,” he tutted. “Really, Begay? Trying to pull one over on a Greater Demon? How much stupider can you get?”

“Stay out of my head, Castleman!”

“You’ll let Felix dig around in your head as much as he wants,” Sage interjected, heat, for the first time, coloring her voice, “because I wouldn’t put it pass you to use her to worm your way out of something.”

“Invoking her name is not in my bag of tricks!” Joshua rebuffed. “My sister is sacred to me!”

“The only thing sacred to you is your own ass,” Brielle dismissed. “You’re doing an awful a lot of talking, Begay, but not saying much. I still haven’t heard why we should give two shits about this Ruth chick.”

“I told you,” Joshua sneered. “She’ll die.” Brielle shrugged maliciously.

“So there will be one less coyote shifter in this world. Excuse me if I don’t shed a tear for the advancement of the extinction of your bloodline.” Joshua’s face spoiled to an unflattering shade of maroon and ripped open his lips, but Sage cut in first.

“I should clarify,” she said. “Ruth is Joshua’s half-sister on his father’s side. She’s completely mundane and doesn’t know a thing about the Downworld. She has no idea what Joshua really is.”

“Surely even you can relate, Weathers,” Joshua seethed. “A naïve girl who suffers because of the greed of others—sound familiar?” 

All humor drained from Brielle’s expression. Her baby blues suddenly went black, a Southern summer sky abruptly overtaken by thick, rolling wall clouds over-fattened with thunder and driving winds. She launched, antlers leading, and Simon didn’t hesitate. He moved in front of Joshua, pushing him back, and then grabbed for a main branch of each antler with his hands. The horns, hard as bone, seared Simon’s palms, sending sharp currents of agony racing down his nerves, but he held tight, digging his heels into the pliant ground. 

“Out of my way, vamp!” Brielle hissed. She didn’t sound like herself. She didn’t sound human at all. The sounds rolling off her tongue were haunting, hushed and ghostly in their timbre, like a wail reverberating distantly in the night.

“There could be an innocent life on the line, Brielle,” Simon replied, batting away the pain as best he could. “I know you care about that. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be helping me to save Magnus.” For a second, Simon was not sure if Brielle comprehended what he was saying. Her eyes were a solid abyss, rotted through and deadened, taking in no light and reflecting nothing. But, slowly, blue bled back in.

“I care about Magnus’ life,” she said, the eerie, harshly whispering voice fading back to her own, “because you and Leilani care about Magnus’ life.” She shook off Simon’s hold, and the nerve-endings in his hands and arms sobbed in relief. “But I don’t care about Begay, so I don’t see why I should care about his sister, mundane or not.”

“What if I said I care about her?” Sage asked. “Because I do. I care about Ruth’s life.”

“Well then,” Brielle grunted reluctantly. “That’s a different story.”

“…Then,” Joshua said tepidly, peeking out from behind Simon, “we have a deal?”

“I didn’t say that,” Sage corrected. “This is not a decision that can be made unilaterally. We have to consult the others. Stay put until we come back. Felix, watch him. If he tries to run, you can collect the retribution Danny’s owed.” Felix’s magic sizzled in whipping bolts.

“With absolute pleasure,” he purred.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Castleman,” Joshua rebuffed. “I’m not moving an inch from this spot.”

“You better not, backwards _or_ forwards,” Noelle said, grinning wider. “Because if you get any closer to the house than this, we can’t promise Eshana won’t turn you into dog food.”


	13. Part II, Chapter 3: The Toxicity of Regret

“HELL NO!” Samir’s enraged scream shook the whole of O’Keefe Place. “ _FUCK_ NO!”

“Cut the dramatics, Samir,” Brielle demanded. Her volume was lower, and Simon had to strain some to make out her words clearly as he climbed the winding stairs of the North Turret.

“DRAMATIC? _DRAMATIC_! THE ASSHOLE TRIED TO KILL JANG-MI, REMEMBER? TRIED RIPPING HER APART WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT! AND I’M BEING ‘DRAMATIC’? NO! _YOU’R_ E BEING _SUPREMELY_ STUPID!”

Simon cringed. _Wrong word choice, Samir_. A cacophonic thud rumbled from below, closely followed by the sharp notes of breaking glass, no doubt precipitated by Brielle’s fist or foot barreling into a sensitive region of Samir’s person. Brielle’s temper was always a quick fuse, but when her stomach craved a feeding, it was a live wire best skirted around at all costs. She had no restraint, only a driving thirst for comeuppance she would exact for even the slightest of offenses. Friends were not exempt. 

Climbing higher, Simon tuned out the argument. It had been carrying on for almost an hour, cycling between Samir’s zealous protests, Sage’s dispassionate appeal for Ruth Begay’s life, and Brielle’s ambivalent refereeing. Simon had decided to bow out when tones turned venomous. His opinions didn’t matter in this instance—he had not suffered Joshua’s betrayal, which he could see was still a gaping, festering wound for his housemates. He respected their pain and would honor how they choose to treat it. It frightened him, though, how easy he could swing either way. He didn’t want some innocent girl to the pay price of a villain simply because she shared his blood…but…he could still feel Joshua’s ribcage beneath his heel, murderous strength ready at the helm and easy to deploy. He couldn’t be certain that, if Sage hadn’t arrived on the scene when she did, that Joshua’s lungs wouldn’t be smashed to naan bread by now. And Simon was ashamed of his feeble shame.

Reaching the top of the stairs, he shook off the dredges of disgrace before pushing open the old, dark wood door before him. Fresh, cool air greeted him, far too refreshing for an interior room with no windows. There was also too much natural-seeming light, and Simon, looking up, blinked rapidly. For a moment, he thought the room’s ceiling had suddenly vanished, leaving thousands of brightly shining stars in its place. But, squinting, he realized they were not stars but innumerable small white flowers, jasmine if the sweetly heady scent was anything to go back. They glowed luminously as if fine dust made of starlight had been powdered across the ceiling wood, and the entire room glittered with a pearly patina.

Simon’s gaze drifted down and widened. As above, the floor was awash in light. Where there should have been floorboards was water, still as a painting and ferrying dozens of white lotuses, opal blossoms that gleamed as lustrously as full moons. Their golden centers were the brightest, however, intensely glistening with honey radiance so very like the hue of Leilani’s eyes. And Simon knew even before he saw her that the bioluminescence was her magnificent handiwork.

Pensive and silent, she was sitting in a straight back chair, the legs of which disappeared into the water, their length unguessable. Her maxi dress was a lilac chiffon, and its hem floated on the water around her slim ankles, but she did not seem distressed that the gown might have been soaking in a watery stain that couldn’t be removed. She kept her stare pinned to the four-poster bed immediately in front her. On it, Magnus, still dressed in unflattering flannel, slumbered in deceptive peace.

“Leilani…?” Simon called from the doorway. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she lifted a hand and gave a little wave. The water around the feet of the bed frame rippled as ivory sprouts emerged and curled around each post, ascending until they reached the rounded top. Then, in the space above the bed, they grew out toward one another, meeting in the middle and budding at an impressive pace. In minutes, a luscious canopy of moon orchids had grown, and their perfume added instantly to the heavenly aroma. Leilani’s hand wilted into her lap.

“There are some seeds I never meant plant, Simon,” she said, her voice so very small. “There were choices that were agony to make, but I thought I was right in making them. I thought I would make them again if I had to relive it all. But if I had known…if I had known that is what would happen…”

“Leilani,” Simon replied incredulously, “you can’t blame yourself for this. Valentine and the Fenslage are the reason Magnus is in danger—not you.”

“They couldn’t have done what they’ve done without me,” she argued solemnly. “This is all started with me, Simon. It was never my intention, but it started with me. I am the root of everything that is happening.” 

“How?” Simon insisted adamantly. “How are you at fault here? Whatever you did—whatever choice you made—how is it possibly your fault?”

“I…” She paused, her breathing hitching. She lifted her golden gaze to the jasmine stars, and she was gone, time-traveling in mere seconds.

“…I had a conpar once,” she began. “All my people do, and centuries ago, not too long after I came to this world, I met mine.” Two sentences. Two sentences composed of so little words but revealed so much, like that Leilani wasn’t from here—"here” being not just New York, but _here_ , this world, this realm—and that she, as Simon had guessed, was far older than she looked, at least couple centuries, if not more. And that, once upon a time, Leilani had been in love. Simon had questions, so many questions bubbling at the back of his throat, ready to burst and erupt, but he held his tongue. A part of him feared that if he interrupted, if he said a single word, Leilani would be jolted from her reverie and say nothing more.

“Her name was Hina,” Leilani continued. The corners of her mouth quirked as her lips formed the name. It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown either. It was a lifetime’s worth of memories, joy, and pain compacted into the tiniest movement. “She was beautiful, strong, brave. She was so very brave. And I was hers, from the moment our eyes met. I was hers…but she wasn’t mine.”

Her honey eyes dropped to her lap, and as they fell, Simon caught a flash of that brilliant, deep, unnamable purple.

“My people’s tradition says I should’ve taken her,” she murmured. “That it didn’t matter what life she might living before I met her. As far as my people were concerned, she was my conpar, so she was mine. Mine to take... …But it did matter, the life she had before me. She had her own people, who she loved more than anything and fought tirelessly for. She was married and had a child… She had a whole world, and she was happy in it. She was whole without me. What right did I have to tear her asunder? How was that loving her? Really loving her?”

She paused again, taking a moment to fold her hands, palms up, atop of her thighs. In their center, seemingly out of the soil of her skin, sprouted a bud that quickly bloomed into a light yellow camellia, its fluttery petals unfurling delicately. More buds appeared and unfolded, creating a ring of white gardenias around the camellia, and then sprung forget-me-not’s, their blue-violet flowers spilling over from Leilani’s palms to graze the water below. The arrangement reminded Simon of a wedding bouquet—a bouquet for a union that never happened. A bouquet of heartbreak.

“So, instead of taking her to my world,” Leilani finally went on, “I stayed in hers. I became what she needed me to be. A friend. A sister. A confident. I stayed with her and loved her any way I could. I thought that was enough. I thought I was right. Even when my brother called me a fool and tried to change my mind, I held firm. I thought I understood the consequences, and I thought the pain of goodbye would be the worst of it…”

The bouquet abruptly fell apart. In a blink of an eye, the flowers wilted, breaking open and shedding their petals in a floral deluge. 

“Hina died young,” Leilani whispered. “Young, nobly…and brutally. I thought I would have forty or fifty years with her. I didn’t even have one. Yet, still, I didn’t regret it. Not then. Not when I held her in my arms for the first and only time…when she died. Not even when I did something my people hadn’t done since the time of Eve and Adam. ‘I am at peace,’ Hina said. ‘I regret nothing.’ So, I resolved to do the same. But now…now I wonder if my brother was right—if I was a fool all along…”

She stopped here, and a long, suffocating silence followed. She had spoken with vagueness as she always had, but Simon knew the worth of what she had just given him. There was no denying the pricelessness of this gift, this piece of Leilani’s Before. He shouldn’t have been greedy. Asking the question he asked next was taking too much. But he couldn’t stop himself, because a piece of the puzzle slid into place as he remembered first meeting Keahi, the moments replaying on the movie screen of his mind. He recalled something that, in the whirlwind of worry for Leilani, he had brushed off as insignificant. Something he should have thought as strange, because it referenced an act he had never once seen Leilani do. An act Simon hadn’t been sure she could do. 

_Foolishness that has only brought tears. And do you know what your tears have wrought, sister?_

“What did you do, Leilani?” Simon asked in a whispering voice. “That thing your people haven’t done since Adam and Eve—what was it?” Leilani raised her eyes to look at him, and, peering into her deep, unfathomable amber, Simon could see the answer before she replied penitently.

“I cried.”

Angels may not cry, but Leilani did. And who didn’t think Leilani in all her golden, ethereal beauty an angel when they first met her? _Tenshi no Namida_ was a more than an apt description for tears that fell from those glittering eyes.

“Hina’s last name,” Simon said, mental wheels spinning at neck break speed, “it was ‘Ito,’ wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Leilani answered. “Aaron Ito is Hina’s great-great-great grandson, though given his character, it is impossible to see the resemblance.”

“I still don’t see how this is your fault,” Simon persisted. He finally dared a step into the room, sinking a sneaker into the light-glossed water, and found the lake was several inches deep, cool waves immediately overtaking his laces and filling in the space between his toes. “Is crying against your people’s laws or whatever?”

“…No,” she sighed. “But, Simon, you have to understand…where I’m from…sorrow is a spectral thing. More of an idea than a real feeling. When paradise is your birthplace and birthright, why in any realm would you shed tears?”

“So, what? Because you didn’t pretend you’re heartless this is somehow all your fault? Leilani, everybody cries—even vampires, and we’re technically dead!”

“It was never a matter of heart,” she replied exhaustedly. “That isn’t what my people lack. That isn’t why we aren’t whole on our own.”

“Then what? ‘Cause I’m trying here, but still I don’t get it.” _I don’t get you_ he didn’t say, but the thought cast a long shadow. The girl who was once so easy for him to understand—the girl whose empathy dwarfed her mystery—was slowly vanishing, leaving behind a being whose multiplying complexities dazzled as much as they baffled. 

“It is probably better that you don’t. It is of little consequence anyhow. Hina is gone…and I am as I always will be…just as the past will always be the past. The toxicity of regret lies in its pointlessness.” She rose, white, yellow, and blue-violet petals bobbing on infant waves and bouncing prettily against lilac chiffon folds that trailed behind her as she took measured steps toward the bed. Reaching its side, she laid a palm atop Magnus’ forehead and began to gently thumb his skin.

“Valentine took one of my tears and used its…power on your friend,” she said. “My tear—of me, for Hina—it is the closest to a union we ever came. And that makes him the closest to any progeny we might have had.”

“A-are you saying Magnus is somehow now your _k-kid_?” Simon stammered. “That’s—what—how? Magnus is, like, half a millennium years-old! How can he be your kid?” Leilani’s slim shoulders gyrated with small titters.

“Parent and child may not be quite the right comparison,” she chuckled, “but it’s not so novel an occurrence—consuming a part of someone you emulate to become like them. Is that not how you became a vampire? Drinking the blood of your sire, recreating you more in their likeness?” 

She offered the comparison absent of malice. She was merely presenting a metaphor Simon could instantly comprehend, her manner even and mild. Nonetheless, Simon must valiantly fight off the spear of outrage that struck his chest. He didn’t want any reminder of the creature he was now, regardless of how placid or well-meaning. No matter how true.

“So is Magnus more like you now?” he asked, ignoring the ache spurned on by the shrapnel of self-loathing. “Less warlock, more…you? Is that why Valentine is so desperate to get him back?”

“There is a bond between us now,” she clarified, “a bit like the one between you and your sire—or the one that you should’ve had.” She pressed her free palm between her breasts and above her heart. “We are connected. I can feel him. Him and his emotions. That is how I knew the night of the carnival—I felt his terror. I was so confused when it happened. I never imagined I would feel the pull of another. That possibility died with Hina…and yet I felt it—I _feel_ it. …Magnus is of me and Hina now, and I’ll protect him. I’ll will protect him with everything I have.”

Her sepia eyes glinted again, but this time, the otherworldly amethyst lingered a moment in the crucible of her pupils, shimmering there like twin purple suns in the blackness of a distant galaxy. The water rippled once more, as new vines, dozens of them, stretched above the white light iced water, growing and twining around the bedposts in thick coils of foliage. Leilani drifted back as the vines threaded through the orchid canopy before extending over each side of the bed, forming solid curtains of green. She then raised a supple hand and thrummed the cool air, curling her long fingers toward her palm as if playing a legato chord, and the curtains danced to her soundless melody, budding hundreds and hundreds of tiny purple blooms that had the look of delicate heliotrope. Except Simon, though no gardener, was pretty sure that heliotrope did not grow on vines. Or have long, razor thin thorns that sparkled like deadly crystals.

The purple suns in her eyes didn’t dim as Leilani turned her head slowly to face Simon. Instead, they burgeoned, burning more and more brilliantly, sending flickering shades over her cheekbones. In this light, she seemed more belladonna than bellflower. 

“Woe to Valentine,” she murmured. “And woe to any soul who would abuse what is left of my love. I fear I have no clemency to offer them.”

“It had to have been fey,” Benedict insisted for the sixth time that afternoon. “Obviously, it wasn’t a warlock, and wolves and vamps don’t possess magic. What else is there?”

“Shadowhunter, perhaps?” Ephraim proposed. He sneered cheekily, bunching the scar tissue between his eyebrows. “It certainly had a seraphic face. Peeled right out of de Vinci’s _Virgin of the Rocks_ —the kind of face sheiks give up fortunes for.” Benedict snorted indignantly.

“Shadowhunters,” he snipped, “don’t possess magic either, asshole. Did you see a single mark on it? No, because its skin was flawless—not a rune in sight. Besides, its face proves my point. Fey have angel blood too, you know?”

“I _do_ know,” Ephraim growled, his sneer evaporating as fast as dew in hundred-degree heat. “Obviously, I was being facetious. And does it really matter? Shadowhunter, fey? Both are angelic mutts, and the only important difference is one makes us money and the other costs us money.”

“Well, didn’t it cost us money last night?” Benedict argued. 

“No, it didn’t. The job was on the house, remember? In fact, it wasn’t even really a job. More like a diversion that merely got diverted. Didn’t cost us a cent.”

“Didn’t cost us a cent?”

Ephraim and Benedict fell silent, as Keren’s sword slid out of a trench coat-dressed chest, thin ruby rivulets leaking from either side of the exiting blade. The strike was expertly placed, the body bereft of life before it started its descent to the ground, and Keren’s arm fell fluidly to her side. Crimson beads dripped from the sword’s pointed end, blotting and seeping into the faded blue rug below.

“No, it didn’t cost us a penny,” she continued, “but it did rob us blind of all respect. Tell me—” Her cerulean eyes, as stark and striking as a winter sky, glanced dangerously over her shoulder. “—which do you think is more valuable?” Ephraim cleared his throat and tried on a pacifying smile.

“Sister,” he said, “you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. How could we have possibly prepared for—”

“Hard on myself?” Keren echoed, scoffing. “You are mistaken, Ephraim. I’m not wallowing in self-pity. I’m acknowledging the shame I deserve. That all three of us deserve.”

“Now, come on Keren, that’s not fair—” Benedict cried, only to clamp his mouth shut as his cousin whirled around on her heel.

“I tell you what’s not fair,” she hissed. “Not fair is being saddled with dead weight, but, fair or not, I’m dragging around you two. You—” Cerulean pinned a shrinking Benedict down. “—an idiot who can’t see past his nose. Fey might beat around the bush for their amusement, but their drive to survive is unparalleled. If the thing last night was really from under the hill, it would’ve aimed to kill. Consider using that organ between your ears once in a while.”

Cerulean snapped to Ephraim, who drew upon his full height to tower a full head above his sister as she took measured steps toward him. She raised a single, pale pointer finger and pressed it between Ephraim’s eyebrows, right on the wrinkled, pinkish scar.

“And you, brother,” she murmured, “might be used to wearing failure so plainly, but do try to remember that being a disappointment is nothing to be glib about.” She lowered her finger, having applied only feather light pressure, but from the way Ephraim’s eyes darkened in outraged agony, she might as well have raked her fingernails across his flesh and added new scars to the old. Stepping back, she began marching forward, stepping over the fresh corpse with grace and ease of someone much accustomed to maneuvering around the dead.

“Let’s go,” she ordered. “We still aren’t done rectifying last night’s fiasco.” Then, she dissolved into the shadows of the corridor, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.


	14. Part II, Chapter 4: In the Image of God

Aaron Ito knew the Fenslage would come to finish what they had started last night in a warlock’s ballroom. They were not the sort to leave messes unintended, least of all of Keren Fenslage, who never made messes in the first place. And Aaron didn’t kid himself. Had there not been…an interloper…he would’ve died last night as the Fenslage intended. He was breathing on borrowed time.

He slammed back a glass of scotch in a single swallow and then let the cup dangle loosely from the light grip of his fingers. The liquor’s warmth pooled instantly in his chest, adding to the reservoir of alcoholic courage already there—now seven glasses deep. Or was it nine? He had stopped keeping count when the dying wails of his men had started to creep through the floorboards.

Somewhere, he mused, his father was, at last, disowning his only son. Joseph Ito had toiled away the better part of his short fifty-one years on a modest fishing boat before the little vessel succumbed to the remnants of a hurricane in the Port of Honolulu. And Aaron’s father, like any captain worth a damn, went down with the ship. That was the kind of stock of Aaron came from. Warriors who turned their swords on themselves to preserve honor. Sugarcane laborers who risked and lost everything to defend the rights of the oppressed. Soldiers who flew over enemy waters to fight for a country that imprisoned their families in internment camps. Captains who went down with their ships so their crew could live.

How had a line like that spawn a man who enjoyed one final drink as his friends were struck down one by one? How did a dynasty of the selfless sire a man who, without blinking, sacrificed others’ lives to steal another breath or two? Maybe his father had spent the last of their family’s gallantness. Maybe all there was for Aaron to inherit was bitterness left by generations who gave and gave and got nothing in return. Even as a child, Aaron had vowed not to live like his ancestors and, more importantly, not to die like them either. He would make something of himself, he had promised vehemently. He would have something to show for his pain and efforts. Better yet, though, he would get what he was owed without exerting any effort if it could be avoided.

So the illicit had come easy to Aaron. Boosting, selling, lying—easy money if you didn’t mind stepping on toes. The means accounted for nothing in the face of the end goal. That was a perspective Aaron’s father could never get behind, so Joseph Ito had sunk into his watery grave without ever knowing the sensation of being proud of his son. And with that flicker of conscious gone, consumed by the sea, Aaron let go of any restraint he might have possessed. The illicit came easier. Trapping, in retrospect, had not been so big a leap from Aaron’s criminal repertoire. He had merely gone from stealing and selling cars to stealing and selling freedom. From stepping on toes to stepping on souls. 

Oh sure, at the start, he had justified the irons in which he encased the fey. Explained away the silver collars snapped around werewolves’ necks. Dismissed the cries of vampires in cages of light. He had measured satisfaction in bodies exchanged for coin. He hadn’t strayed so far from the family business, he had told himself. His father had sold fish, and Aaron sold pets. Exotic pets, yes, but pets. He had to think of them as pets. He had to, because the thought that those creatures had a drop of humanity carried implications too terrible for Aaron to bear.

So, in ardent ignorance, he sank to new lows: making deals with a man no better than the devil. Giving away an heirloom that was so valued his ancestors had quite literally died instead of parting with it. Adding shamelessly to the torture and misery of a warlock in the pursuit of recognition. Committing near genocide to save his own hide.

But now he could not stay blind. There was no where to run. He had taken and taken, and the bill was due. The soullness of men was paid for sevenfold, and Keren Fenslage was the instrument karma had chosen to collect.

The fact Ito hadn’t fled might have been impressive if he hadn’t been so obviously wasted. He grinned idiotically at Keren as she ambled into his lounge and, with a shaky hand, raised a squat glass.

“Keren Fenslage,” he toasted, slurring the syllables of her name, “the Frigid Flame.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, rounding the end of the leather couch Ito was splayed on. He frowned dramatically.

“You don’t like it?” he replied. “You should. You should wear like it a badge of honor. What I wouldn’t give for respect like that…” Keren didn’t bother to suppress a snort.

“Respect is earned, Ito,” she sneered. “It takes work. And heaven knows you haven’t worked for a single thing in your pathetic life.” Ito’s face fell, and, as he lowered his glass, he suddenly looked so resigned. Resigned and broken.

“Heaven knows indeed,” he mumbled into his drink. “Heaven knows everything. Heaven _sees_ everything.” A coil began to twist to life right beneath Keren’s breastbone, and her fingers twitched with the desire to trace the faint scratches on her forearms, painted there by chrysanthemum petals sharper than needles. Instead, she clutched the hilt of her sword tighter.

“God, would it really kill you, Ito, to die with some semblance of dignity?” 

“God?” he barked laughingly. “God already condemned me. And you, Ms. Frigid Flame. She condemned us both.”

“Are…are you joking?” Keren growled. “That’s what you think it was? God?” Ito cocked an infuriating half-smile.

“Did I offend you? Oh, that’s right. You Fenslage are the Evangelistic type—Bible-thumping, fire and brimstone, and all that shit.”

“Careful, Ito,” Keren warned. “There are many ways to die. Some more painful than others.” She let fury scorch the earth of her mind, because she didn’t want Ito’s words to take root and sprout into insane imaginings. 

“Bit late for grandstanding,” Ito sighed. “Dead is dead, no matter how you slice it. And don’t be so upset. It isn’t just your religion I insult. My old man was old-school Shinto, and he boxed my ears in every time I disrespected the _kami_ , which was on the daily. Sometimes multiple times a day if I was feeling industrious. The way he used to go on and on about how our family have always honored the gods. Even after my great-great-whatever grandparents came over from the motherland, especially my great-grandmother, despite all her radical thinking.”

“So you’re a blasphemer on all fronts. Glad to know your death won’t be so great a loss to any faith.” Ito chuckled almost jovially and raised his glass once more, this time to his lips.

“No one’s gonna miss me,” he said matter of fact. “You’ve already killed anyone who’d even notice I’m gone. Maybe…maybe that is the price she was talking about. All I ever wanted was to be something—to be someone. But now I’m going die a loss nobody lost.”

He began to tilt his glass up but paused midway to jerk his chin toward the opposite end of the room, where a sleek, modern metal desk sat. In the dim lighting, Keren could make out something lying on its silver surface—a scroll carefully rolled out.

“My great-grandma used to paint,” he explained somberly. “That is supposedly the last thing she painted—a portrait of _Konohanasakuya-hime_ , the goddess of cherry blossoms. She’s the reason, they say, why humans live such short, fragile lives. Because a god called Nigni chose her as his wife over her sister, the ugly but long-lasting rock princess. Beauty over durability. Love over immortality. I guess my grandmother believed that was a fair trade.”

“Do you?” Keren asked impulsively and immediately regretted it. What did it matter? Why had she let a dead man walking ramble on for so long anyway? Still, she waited for his answer. He only shrugged.

“Can’t say,” he said. “That’s an awfully deep question to ask a selfish guy. Ask someone more qualified. Show them that painting—it’s yours if you want it. Who knows? The answer might save your soul.” Keren’s cerulean eyes flash froze.

“I don’t need saving.” Ito smiled one final time. A presumptuously knowing smile.

“Sure about that?” 

Then he downed his drink, and Keren waited for the bob of his Adam’s Apple to finish before she swung her sword and neatly slit his throat. He went limp instantly, his scotch glass dropping from his hand like stone and shattering in fat pieces against the hardwood floor. 

Keren should have left immediately as his blood, pouring from the neck fissure, babbled like a forest brook. She should have left all his musings chilling with his corpse. Yet, her feet did not lead her to the door but to the steel desk and the scroll a top of it. And when her eyes descended on the painting, worn with age but preserved, she could hear Aaron Ito laughing his way down to hell and gnashed her teeth that she had killed him so cleanly and so swiftly. She should’ve sawed him in half, hacking from his crotch to his useless brain.

Across the room, Ito’s body began to shake, first as a soft tremble and then as a roaring quake, vibrating at increasingly volatile speeds until, like the earth under assault, it split right down the middle, the edges warped and melted, as if sliced by a lava-hot blade. And from the burnt flesh wafted flames the color of glacier cyan, a pure artic aquamarine emitting smoke as white—and cold—as ice.

Keren didn’t earn her nickname due to her abominable ability—she refused think of it as a talent. Or, infinitely, unforgivably worse, magic. It was merely something she could do and would much rather that she couldn’t. So she didn’t…when it was within her control. Which meant her emotions had to be kept locked down more securely than Fort Knox. Emotion, she had discovered in the two years since the flame first manifested, seemed to be the fuel and match, and she avoided ignition at all costs.

That was how she became dubbed the Frigid Flame. She burned without mercy, the rumors whispered, and without passion. She came through like a wildfire, consuming everything in her path, all the while wearing a face of blank marble. The staunch detachment had endeared her to her father, Jedidiah Fenslage, a man of exacting and immovable expectations, and he held her coldness up as the gold standard for both his employees and his kin. Their work was not to be delighted in, and their quarry, though lesser in every way, was to be respected, as all God’s creatures were to be respected. As far as her father was concerned, only weaklings raised a hand to dogs and werewolves. 

“Kicking a dog will not make you a bigger man,” Jedidiah would say. “It only showcases how small you really are.” 

Ephraim’s failing was not that he didn’t understand this but that he didn’t accept it. The scar from his first hunt was not just superficial. She hadn’t been there for the hunt, having been only ten, but she remembered him coming back, half carried by their aunt Judith, his face veiled in crimson. She recalled the way he had glared out from under lashes clumped together with crusty red, that dark smoldering soreness in his grey-blue eyes. The look had only gotten darker three years later when Keren came back from her first hunt upright, scar-free, and with a werewolf collared and leashed. Maybe it would’ve been different if she had caught a fey or vamp. If she hadn’t so blatantly succeeded where he had failed. If their father had been less obvious with his approval. 

But he hadn’t, and Ephraim had never stopped trying to avenge his abasement nor half-attempted to conceal the pleasure wielding a whip or chain gave him. To Jedidiah, Keren’s indifference, compared to Ephraim’s zealousness, looked a lot like reverence. So Keren was the heir apparent to her father’s mantel. One day, the Fenslage Company would be hers to lead and guide, and the high hopes were in each of her kinsmen’s eyes. They fell on her like a yoke, cumbersome and onerous, and Keren knew exactly how far she had to fall if she buckled under its weight. She couldn’t crumble. She couldn’t look down. She couldn’t lose control. She couldn’t—regardless of how irrigating Ephraim’s thinly veiled subterfuge was.

“You really don’t care?” he demanded from a step behind her. His gravelly baritone echoed against the spotless glass lining the cavernous entrée foray, which separated the business half of the company’s headquarters from the personal. It was more aquarium than room really, walled in on all sides by sheets of rippling blue. On the other side swam sea creatures of the more outlandish variety—mermaids, mostly, beautiful and listless as they drifted between schools of Regal Tangs and the odd grindylow. Absentmindedly, Keren scanned the tanks for Odysseus, Aunt Lissette’s favorite quarry—treasured and named so because, as told in her aunt’s frequent retellings, the “beast had enough wiles and tricks to rival the Greek hero himself”—but the creature was nowhere to be seen.

“No, I don’t,” she snapped, squinting as she caught a flash of imperial red scales in between tendrils of wavering seaweed. Ah, there maybe. “Our task was to make sure Ito and his band of merry men would no longer be a nuisance, and seeing as they’re all dead, our task has been accomplished.”

“But _we_ didn’t kill all of them!” Ephraim bit back. “Ito was cut in half. Cracked like an egg! What do you think did that?”

“Something you shouldn’t be so eager to look for,” Keren advised testily, choosing her words carefully. This too was something she had been forced to master in the last two years—dressing up lies in truthful costumes.

“What if it comes for us next?” Ephraim pressed. “Shouldn’t we get it before it gets us?”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Keren sneered. “How do we find it? What do we even look for? And if we do find it, how do we kill it? How close can we get? What weapon do we use? What should we avoid? Can it kill us with a look? With a thought?”

“You made your point,” he grumbled impatiently. “But we should, at minimum, investigate—”

“If I’ve made my point,” Keren interrupted, “then why we are still having this conversation?”

“ _Keren_ —” He broke down her name into chucks of rock, heavy and sharp as if mining for a softer, more pliable part of her. He should have known by now that under rock there was only titanium.

“Ephraim,” she sighed, halting her march. Against her back, the rolled-up painting, secured with a makeshift sash, shifted, grazing the vertebrae of her spine. She hadn’t wanted to take it. Ito, though dead, didn’t deserve the vindication. But…something deep and visceral within her had ached wretchedly when she tried to leave it behind.

“Do you know what Ito’s fatal flaw was?” she continued, keeping her eyes glued ahead. “He was a pig. A greedy little pig who was never satisfied with what he had and what was right in front of him. That’s how this whole disaster began—when he bit off more than he could possibly chew. We have our mouths full, brother. So don’t go adding things unnecessarily to our plate. It’s wasteful. And stupid.”

“That,” he said, low and deadly, “is the second time tonight you have implied I am fool.” He moved silently, like a serpent in dark waters, but she sensed the switch in the air and sidestepped smoothly to the left as his fist came hurdling forward. The inertia of his large, well-muscled body kept propelling him, unable to change course as, in a split second, Keren glided directly behind, lifted a leg, and shoved her boot squarely at the small of his back. The kick sent him flying into the aquarium glass, and his palms, rising to brace the blue, did little to cushion the crash. Grunting, he started to push away, a lunge primed in his knees, but he stopped, chest still flat against the transparent wall, when he felt the tip of her blade kiss the nape of his neck. The blood of its latest victim had not quite dried, and blood dribbled into the space between his collar and skin.

“If you do not want to be called a fool,” Keren drawled, “then maybe you should refrain from acting like one.”

“You—”

“Enough.” Their father’s order was soft. Jedidiah Fenslage always spoke softly—and reprovingly—like a wizened preacher at the Sunday lectern. He had the build to match, tall and thin, grey streaked through chestnut hair. Who would’ve guessed that such a frail seeming man could lasso fanged beasts and feral fey without breaking a sweat?

“You’re scaring the fish,” Jedidiah admonished. “Your aunt will be quite crossed if Odysseus gets upset and goes into one of his moods.” Sword still raised, Keren flicked her gaze up to find Odysseus staring down at her. His eyes were the color of the sea at dusk, navy so opaque it was almost black, with flecks of orangish gold. His upper half was that of a man, a fetching man, brawny and ebony-skinned, but his lower half—a long, muscular mass of scales that fanned out into a wide, crowntail fin—was the shade of blood in the water, striking, glossy crimson edged with murky blue.

He cocked his head, dreads floating around him, and spread his lips, unveiling a shockingly bone-white row of pike teeth in a gruesome grin. His eyes lowered a hair, and Keren’s followed their line of sight to where her fingers clutched the hilt of her sword. A sledgehammer of horror barreled into her ribcage as frost crept like a blight over the handle, emitting faint streams of icy smoke. 

She withdrew her weapon at once, swinging her arm hard down to her side. Her eyes glanced up again in time to see Odysseus’ menacing leer stretch wider.

 _I am not like you_ every inch of her screamed silently at the beast. _We are not the same. No matter what you think you see, we’re not. We are_ not _the same._

“I apologize, Father,” she droned, not without an impressive mirage of apathy. “I acted imprudently.” Jedidiah arched a fine eyebrow.

“Imprudent?” he murmured. “No, darling. Rough, perhaps, but not imprudent. I applaud you for your diligence in trying to teach your brother a lesson he repeatedly fails to grasp. Those less patient would have long given up on such an…exhausting endeavor.”

Ephraim whirled around like a grenade hurled sloppily into the air—spark lit and moments from detonation.

“Father!” he howled. “Before you automatically decide who’s in the wrong, you should get all the facts. Ito, he’s—”

“Benedict has informed me of Mr. Ito’s unfortunate bisection,” Jedidiah assured smoothly. “Concerning? Of course. Does it warrant an eventual investigation? Undoubtedly. But as Keren has so valiantly tried to instruct you, we do not heedlessly fly into the jaws of unknown danger. That is very likely how Mr. Ito came to meet his fate. So unless you wish to also be split in two, son, I suggest you learn from your younger sister.”

The grenade’s wick was waning, the spark coaxed along the fuse by Jedidiah’s precise word choice. All his disappointment was loaded into the implied reminder of Ephraim’s shortcomings. Into the unspoken fact that Ephraim was not the firstborn and only son Jedidiah had prayed for.

“Father,” Ephraim, simultaneously cowed and incensed, “Father, I—”

“Have you forgotten that the job is only half-done?” Jedidiah cruised on. “The matter of the Orpheus Group has been, thank God, put to bed, but there is still a wayward warlock out there somewhere that needs to be brought back home. Mr. Morgan is quite anxious to have his pet returned. Let us fulfill that duty before we turn our attention to selfish concerns.”

“S-selfish?” Ephraim choked out. “You think being worried about our family’s well-being is selfish?” The spark and gunpowder were about to meet, conceive, and give birth to volatility, and Keren suddenly discovered she did not have the energy for it.

“Father,” she said, “may I be excused? I would like to clean it up.” Jedidiah nodded curtly.

“Go on, dear. Wash up and rest a while. We’ll reconvene in an hour. Perhaps by then, God willing, your brother will have gained some semblance of sense.”

She was gone before the explosion unfolded and expanded, but she could still feel eyes upon her as she sped away, a stare as heavy and unrelenting as storm clouds gathering above a churning sea.

The steam began to lift from Keren’s skin just as she had unrolled the old painting across her bedspread. Her forefinger and thumb pinched the bridge of her nose, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight as she kissed her teeth.

“What,” she demanded, “are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone!”

“Yes,” came the patronizing chuckle. “Repeatedly in fact.”

“And, yet, here you are.” Her blue eyes opened, and there it was, in all its golden-brown glory, midnight black curls loose around a strong jawline, its gaze a sepia-sheened bister. 

“Yes,” it echoed. “Here I am.” 

“Why,” she whined, her fingers curling into fists, “why for the love all of that is holy can’t you leave me the fuck alone!”

“Because all that is holy has determined that I am never to leave you.”

“Cut the crap! I told you already! Lines like that mean shit to me. Now go!” It ignored her, an irritating pattern of disregard it had yet to deviate from, and instead peered down at the painting. Ombre studied the strokes painstakingly.

“It is a very good likeness,” it said finally, its voice as quiet as the crackle of a dying fire. Keren blinked.

“Wait…you know wha—who this is?” 

“A being ought to know his own sister I would think.” The bottom of the world fell out from under her, as the walls of her bedroom, a utilitarian eggshell white, closed in. The air became cold and brittle, so thin that a breath could snap it like a twig, so it was good thing Keren couldn’t breathe. The steam was getting thicker, billowing off her olive skin in silvery columns.

“She’s your sister?” she gasped.

“My twin specifically,” was the droll answer. “All my people are born as twins.”

“And what exactly are your people?” Dizzy and light-headed, she heard Ito’s bitter laugh resounding through the entirety of her mind, providing an answer too absurd and too terrifying.

_…God?_

In the painting, dressed in a stunning kimono of peony and cherry blossom pink, _Konohanasakuya-hime_ proffered neither denial nor confirmation. Her almond eyes, an exquisite honey gold laced by a deep, unnamable purple, simply gazed back, seeing everything Keren was trying so desperately to hide.


	15. Part II, Chapter 5: The Point of No Return

His sister would not forgive him. Keahi, the name by which this pale, shallow world knew him—by which Keren knew him—knew that beyond a fleeting shadow of a doubt. This would be a wound that no salve would be able to repair, and it would stand between them as a bottomless, impassable cavern of trespass.

But, once, his sister too had made an incomprehensible choice. She had rejected reason and fate and destiny, citing freedom and freewill and free love. She had chosen acute agony, doomed herself to loneliness eternal, because, as she had once told him under a bayan tree, “Hina is free to choose. And she did not choose me.” Under that same bayan tree, beneath its wizened branches, she had refused to regret her choice, even as Hina’s bright walnut eyes had dulled and deadened. Even as her eyes shimmered wetly like amethysts immersed in a crystal flood.

Over two hundred years later, and Keahi still couldn’t believe what he had witnessed. Tears from eyes whose ancestors had long forgotten the sensation. Tear drops that froze into gems more precious than opaline pearls. Tears, that in the end, were cast aside, trafficked, and abused—astounding sacrifice that had amounted to absolutely nothing. Keahi would not be loved like that, without recompense or reward. His heart would have more than the ghosts of tears to show for its labors.

Keren Fenslage was his, as he was hers. When their gazes had first met, Keahi had felt that truth reverberate in his being’s every cell and fiber, and he had resolved that providence would prove infallible. Yet, so far, Keren had displayed a foolhardiness outrageous enough to rival his sister’s. 

“Love at first sight?” she had scoffed with a cruelly beautiful sneer as she had wiped an iron blade clean against her sleeve. The slick fabric had flashed macabrely in moonlight as she had folded her arms. “Do I look like a fucking fairytale princess?”

Her dismissal was unmovable and repeated, despite the mounting evidence of their compatibility—of how perfectly they fit together into a whole. Her chill to temper his flame, his heat to thaw her ice. The steam that condensed and built in their mere conjoined presence was irrefutable proof. But still, Keren had turned away as hard and unyielding as the blades strapped to her waist. So vexed was Keahi that he had turned to his sister for guidance, though he had already known the unacceptable answer she would give.

“You must respect what she wants,” she had advised. “You must honor the choices she makes.” Watching his sister in that little teashop, sweeping up glass shards and crumpled flower petals, he had renewed his resolve—he would not be loved like she had. He would not.

So here he was, Keren before him, winter blue eyes fixated, showing something more than contempt behind their frosty veil. The sight would have overwhelmed him—would’ve wracked him senseless with bliss and awe—were he the subject of their thunderstruck stare and not a portrait of his sister. His divinely beautiful sister, made all the more beautiful by the hand that had painted her. Keren splayed her fingers over the image, tracing the careful blush pink strokes that composed the cascading blossom pattern of the kimono. Her fingertips then danced up to his sister’s face and landed right below the portrait’s eyes, amber and amethyst pure and deep.

Here he was at the point of no return.

“And what exactly are your people?” Keren demanded, never lifting her stare.

“I am more than happy to tell you,” Keahi responded with convincing insouciance. “But I’d much rather show you. Just say the word, and we’ll be in my—”

“—homeland,” she finished bitingly. “I’m suddenly having déjà vu, and I believe this the part where I tell you to forget it. I am not a damsel in a tower waiting for a knight in shining armor to slay the dragon and whisk me away. I slay my own dragons, thank you very much.”

“I never said you needed rescuing—”

“Didn’t you?” she countered easily. Her eyes finally snapped back to him, assaulting him like a sudden, roaring blizzard gust of artic wind. She flung up her hands and made vague gestures at the surrounding air. “What do you call Earth? Ah, that’s right, ‘a drab, miserable, gray pit just half a step above hell.’ You talk about taking me to your homeland like you would be doing me a fantastic favor. Well, news flash, I like my world just the way it is—especially when you’re not in it.” Keahi’s blood boiled instantly, and he couldn’t stop the eruption that spewed from his mouth.

“You mean the world in which you are little more than a glorified dog catcher? The one in which you lie every waking minute of every day? The world that requires to you to deny who you really are to stay a part of it?”

“You know,” Keren replied, her voice dropping to a deadly hush. “I’m beginning to see the family resemblance. Your sister thinks she has me all figured out too. She even gave me a lecture on my failings as a human being. Next time you see her, do tell her ‘fuck you’ for me.”

“If you were anyone else,” Keahi murmured, his tone a warning sizzle of a burgeoning flame, “you’d find yourself severed from your tongue.”

“Go ahead,” she dared with sinister glee. “Give it your best shot.” The steam brewed and billowed, growing so thick that Keahi had to step into Keren’s intimate space to see the stark blue of her eyes clearly.

“Like I said, if you were anyone else…but you’re not. You are who you are.” He held her stare as long as he could, umber latching onto winter cerulean as tightly as a drowning man holding fast to driftwood. His foot inched a little closer, and abruptly she pulled away, taking a step back and turning her attention once more to his sister’s amber.

“What was she doing at the warlock soiree last night?” Keren asked briskly. “She’s no more warlock than I am, so what she was doing there? And don’t bother denying it. I know you were there, following me like a deranged stalker.” Keahi’s jaw clenched.

Last chance turn to back.

“What were _you_ doing there?” He posed it as a question, light and airy, yet the way she slowly raised her eyes told him she had seen it for the answer it was.

“Magnus Bane?” she sounded out. “What does your sister have to do with Magnus Bane?”

“It’s better you let the warlock go,” he admonished—useless, futile hedging. “My sister let you go with a couple cuts, because she does not care for slaughter, but my people were never noted for our sense of leniency. Try her patience, and you’ll find out even my sister’s mercy has limits.”

“She has the warlock, doesn’t she?” Keren said. “All this time, we’ve all been running around like headless chickens, pecking each other to death, and you knew exactly where he was and didn’t say a thing. For someone who claims to be so devoted to me, you sure enjoy making me look like a fool.”

“You don’t know what’s really going on here,” he attempted to explain. “This is not about your father’s bottom line, or your…customer’s dissatisfaction. You have no idea about the forces at play. You don’t understand what that warlock now means to my sister or what she’ll do to keep him safe.”

“So what?” Keren laughed crassly. “You were _protecting_ me? I thought I made it clear that I slay my own damn dragons!”  


“My sister is not a dragon!” Keahi cried thunderously. “You can’t slay her! She can’t be slayed! She’s a force of nature! You get out of her way and pray she passes you over!”

“If she’s a force of nature, what does that make you then?” she, unshaken, challenged.

“I am the same,” he answered, more softly but no less vehemently. “The difference is you are a part of me. Heaven has deemed it so. Thus, harming you is harming myself, so I will always bend for you. But my sister, she lost that part of herself a long time ago—”

He glanced over Keren’s shoulder at the painting, and her gazed followed.

“—until Magnus Bane. In him, she reclaims a piece of what she lost. And she will not lose it again.”

“Loss?” she repeated. “You want to talk about loss? Okay. Because of that warlock, my family’s business and livelihood are in the gutter. Who knows if the industry will recover from the idiocy of Aaron Ito and the Orpheus Group! My family’s reputation and future are riding on retrieving that warlock. If we fail—if _I_ fail—we’ll be ruined. Completely ruined.”

Keahi would not share his sister’s fate. He would gain more than he was about to give up.

“I cannot tell you how to get to my sister. Barging into her dominion will not get what you want.” Tsking, Keren began to turn her back on him, her copper brown locks slipping out from behind her ear and falling into her eyes. Keahi clasped her wrist, tugged her back round, and corralled the stray hairs back in place.

“But,” he continued, “I can tell you how to make her come to you.” Icicle blue glinted solely at him, and eager elation leeched all dread from his heart.

The line had been crossed. The wrong had been committed. But Keahi regretted nothing—at least not in this moment.

At least not yet.


	16. Part II, Chapter 6: Bird of Prey

“Have I mentioned how utterly ridiculously moronic this is?” Brielle muttered.

“Yes,” Joshua, monotone, affirmed. “Seventeen times, in fact.”

“Sixteen,” Sage amended. “One time she used the word ‘suicidal.’”

“Now is not the time for semantics!” Brielle growled. “Moronic, suicidal—same damn thing! Doing anything that has a ninety-five percent chance of killing you is, by definition, moronic! How in the hell did I let myself get talked into this? Damn it, I should’ve eaten—I’m going to die on an empty stomach. Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“No one is going to die,” Joshua sighed exasperatedly. 

“Speak for yourself,” Noelle sniffed as she fiddled her hair, which hung a few inches past her shoulders in a thick braid, a sunflower yellow ribbon woven through each plait. “I haven’t ruled out serenading you straight into a seraph blade yet.”

“If you’re trying to scare me—epic fail. I know for a fact that your voice is about as dangerous as a common songbird on a sacred ground, and all shadowhunter institutes are built on sacred ground.”

“Built on a sacred ground,” Felix concurred, “but they don’t always stay on sacred ground.” Joshua rubbernecked toward Felix, who stood three or four feet behind stretching his wings into a full arch, and their golden feathers ferried the glints of newborn moonlight.

“What are you talking about, Castleman?” Joshua demanded. “Buildings don’t up and move when they feel like it.” Lowering his wings, Felix pushed his frames up the bridge of his nose in his usual smugly knowing way.

“One, they do, if they’re interdimensional, and two, I wasn’t implying institutes physically relocate.”

“Then, what are you talking ab—”

“Something sacred,” Brielle interpolated, her tone suddenly somber, “only stays sacred if it holds meaning. A cross is just a hunk of wood in the hand of an atheist. Sacred ground is no different. Temples, synagogues, mosques—they’re just buildings, places, if no one worships there anymore. And shadowhunters are too high and mighty to pray to anything besides their pompous asses.”

“And so hallow ground becomes hollow soil.” Jang-mi’s docile voice cut through the night air like a whistling arrow, her small face a pretty portrait of indifference. All heads swiveled to take in her petite figure, straight as a proud pine and shielded by a fan of fox tails. Samir was standing the closest to her—and quite intentionally between her and Joshua—and he raised his hand and let it hover behind her shoulder. But he didn’t touch it, and, after a moment, his hand fell limply to his side. Simon couldn’t fault his hesitation. Jang-mi always had the air of a rose at the center of a thorn bush.

Tonight, she and Leilani had that common, that aura of delicate danger. Beside Simon, Leilani, breathtaking in a deep orchid wrap dress, was silent, her golden-violet gaze firmly fixed on the New York Institute. They were on a rooftop of a shuttered warehouse across the street, but the Institute still loomed far overhead, an imposing cathedral of spirals centered around a centuries mute bell tower. To untrained sight, the church had gone to seed, abandoned to rot and weeds. Yet for the eye that saw better, there was no mistaking what the structure really was. No overlooking the fortress of angelic might.

“Are you sure, Simon?” she asked abruptly. “No one would blame you if you stayed here.” Simon knew that. He knew that all too well. Ever since the decision had been made to accept Joshua’s deal, everyone had kept looking at him with unspoken permission to sit this one out. And that permission had turned into stark surprise when he had refused to stay behind with Danny and Eshana. They couldn’t understand how he could bear to come so close to his Before. How he could strike an inflamed nerve and disturb a festering wound. But part of Simon recognized that boat had sailed nights ago when he had discovered Magnus swaddled in Leilani’s arms. In that moment, fate or chance or both had bound his Before and his After together. There was no escaping the collision. There was no avoiding the Institute and what—who—awaited inside.

“I’m sure, Leilani,” he said with a small smile. “I’ll be alright. We won’t even be seen, not with Jang-mi here. And with Samir’s ‘darlings’ keeping the shadowhunters busy, we’ll be in and out with no one the wiser.

“Let us hope it is that simple,” Leilani murmured. The solemn underpinnings of her tone suggested she didn’t believe it would be.

“And even if you are seen,” Sage chimed in as she came to stand on the other side of Simon, “you won’t really be seen—Castor Bleu and Violet Dawn will. Jang-mi will see to that, and the shadowhunters will be left chasing imaginary enemies.” 

“What about you and everyone else?” Simon queried. “Aren’t you going to have a backup disguise?” Sage wrinkled her nose.

“What would be the point of that? The shadowhunters think that our kinds don’t exist. They don’t know how to hunt us, let alone beat us—not they could.”

“Don’t take them so lightly. The sole purpose of their existence is to kill demons, and they’re very, _very_ good at it. I’ve seen them take on some of the worst Hell has to offer and win.” Sage cocked her head, and her teal eyes sparked like flint scraping against flint.

“You really don’t get, do you Simon?” she sighed a tad patronizingly. “You, me, all of us—we’re wholly a different breed of Downworlder.” She tilted her head toward Felix and then Noelle. “A warlock that not only looks like angel but knows your every sin like one. A mermaid that can walk on land and bring her voice with her.” Another head tilt, this time aimed at Noelle, Samir, and Joshua. “Fey whose powers of deception and illusion trump any scheme born in the Seelie and Unseelie courts.”

Teal shifted to Simon.

“A vampire who can endure the sunlight,” she continued. “We’re evolution at work—Darwinism at its best. We are the retribution for thousands of Downworlder murders at the hands of shadowhunters. We’re due and punishment. We are kingdom come.”

“Suffering from delusions of grandeur, are we?” Simon attempted to dismiss, laughing nervously. Sage smirked and looped a platinum lock around her finger.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.” Simon’s laughter petered out under the strain of Sage’s steady stare. She had fallen back on her flirtish manner, cloaking her intent and meaning in tantalizing ambiguity, yet the shine in her teal eyes hinted at a clarity that Simon was not keen on examining.

“Well,” Joshua called, clapping his hands together, “ready to get this show on the road?”

“Don’t do that,” Brielle groused.

“Don’t do what?”

“Make this sound fun. This is not fun. This is almost certain death.”

“Christ, Weathers, what do you know about fun? You’re such a killjoy. Seriously, cleaning out a litterbox is more enjoyable than hanging out with you.” Brielle grinned carnivorously and prowled forward, and, stepping into a moonbeam, her shadow stretched onto the roof’s concrete finish. But the shade wasn’t the shape of an altered girl. No, the dark specter was more deerlike than human, hooved and four-legged. The torso and head did resemble that of a woman, yet only vaguely, the proportions too slender, too skeletal, and dwarfed by a towering, branching crown of antlers. Simon swallowed thickly, nearly giving into the urge to ask Leilani if that shadow was a window into Brielle’s truer self.

He never got chance, however, because suddenly a screech split the air. A bloodcurdling, banshee shriek that didn’t stab the eardrum but obliterated it, shredding sense and bearing to pieces. Simon hit his knees and clutched at his ears, though the effort was moot. That screech could pierce any barrier, flesh and stone. And it did, blowing out every single window of the Institute, glass hail swarming and hurdling downward. Reflexively, Simon reached out for Leilani, but she had never fallen. Instead, upright, she stretched out her arms and lifted her eyes up to the oncoming onslaught, and Simon saw, in the briefest, longest second, amber evanesce into pure, solid amethyst. No, deeper than that. Deeper and more brilliant.

Deep, brilliant, and captivating, Leilani’s eyes glittered and glowed, and glass shards became softer and softer the farther they fell, landing as crepey, white trumpet blossoms. Catching a fistful in his palms, Simon scented them, his nostrils instantly filling with a piquant fragrance that called to mind lilies.

“Rosebay,” he heard Noelle exhaled breathlessly nearby. “Mama loved rosebay…”

Vines and thorns quick and lethal as viper fangs summoned with a thought. Chrysanthemum petals to needles with the flick of a slender wrist. Glass shards to rosebay with the mere twinkle of an eye. _Leilani_ , Simon wondered wordlessly, _Leilani, who are you? Who are you really? And what else are you hiding behind those eyes?_

He kept these aching ponderings to himself, as, slowly, each of them staggered to their feet, the screech having died out as a whining squall. Shell-shocked and mouths ajar, they glanced at one another before turning back to the Institute, a river of rosebay flooding the street in between.

“We are doing to die,” Joshua half-whispered. “We are so going to die.” Shaking flowers out of her hair, Brielle snorted. 

“Who’s the killjoy now?”

No one was making snide remarks when they slipped into the Institute. They went through the front door, Jang-mi’s illusion easily providing cover and covertness, and were immediately confronted by a shadowhunter. A dead shadowhunter, laying on his back in a dark ruby pool, glassy eyes wide and lips contorted in a terrified, silent scream. His left hand was splayed over a gaping hole in his side, torn and tattered intestines spilling out across his stomach.

“Oh shit!” Joshua gagged.

“Crap,” Brielle, steely and unruffled, spat. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Aetos,” Felix said. “No doubt about that.”

“Ae-tos?” Simon repeated. “What’s an ae-tos?” Samir palmed his face and sighed.

“Ever heard of Prometheus?” he asked grimly. “Greek Titan who stole fire for Man and duly punished by Zeus?” 

“That is not right,” Leilani interjected quietly. “That is not why he was punished.” But Simon was only half-listening. Yes, the name Prometheus did ring a bell, and Simon recalled a seventh grade English class in which he heard of Prometheus’ feats, most infamously his theft of fire and the gruesome, eternal price he had paid for it.

“The dude who got his liver eaten by a giant eagle every day?” Simon squeaked. He dared another glance at the maimed shadowhunter’s exposed inwards. _No way. No way—that’s just a myth._ But all the stories were true. Why would Prometheus’ be an exception? As if reading Simon’s mind, which he probably did, Felix confirmed his suspicions.

“The giant eagle is a demon named Aetos,” Felix explicated. “He’s not as big as the myth says he is, but he’s big enough to make Shaq look like a midget, and he does have a voracious appetite for livers.”

“Shadowhunters chased him out of Greece eons ago,” Sage added. “He bounced around Europe awhile before ending up in the good old U.S. of A. I had nasty run in with him in Panama City once. Even for a demon, he’s one sick son of a bitch. He prefers his victims alive when he rips out their livers. He likes knowing that the last thing they see is him munching on their organs.”

“Sounds like a real charmer,” Simon shuddered.

“He was not always that way,” Leilani said. “His purpose was just once.” But she spoke too softly again, and her voice was lost to Brielle’s sneering drawl.

“Didn’t Aetos drop off the radar a couple years ago?” she asked. “Rumor had it his psycho ass finally got banished back to the abyss.”

“Obviously rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated,” Samir said. 

“This is not the time for corny quotes!” Noelle cried. She swung a French-tipped nail at the shadowhunter’s slacken, screaming face. “This is no longer just evading the angel Gestapo! There is an overgrown bird with a penchant for livers on the loose! What are we going to do?”

“Aetos…Aetos is not our problem,” Joshua replied. Face pale and turning an unflattering shade of pea green, he was hunched over, clutching his stomach and side. His coyote eyes darted about, scanning the dark bend of corridor. “Like Simon said, the whole point of shadowhunters’ existence is to kill demons. Aetos is a demon—they’ll be fine.” Noelle dropped her gaze pointedly at the corpse and, curling back her lips, gnashed her pike teeth. Her visage of cherub-cheeked innocence was gone. In its place was a primal ferocity of the unfathomable depths of the sea.

“You call that ‘fine’?”

“Aetos is our problem,” Simon asserted quickly. “If he hurts or kills Alec, then all of this is pointless.” That, and Simon was not strong enough to withstand the weight of his guilt if Aetos laid a hand on any of his old friends. …Even Clary. How could he stand to be in his own skin if he turned on his back on them—on Jace—and ran away a second time?

What was the point of having the light of the sun if the rest of his eternity was overshadowed by shame?

A song was primed in Noelle’s throat. Its notes bubbled and bounced, preening for their debut. Rarely did instinct, lusty for blood, rule her resolve, but tonight, it had her senses in full throttle, and every inch of her skin itched for fresh prey. She wanted to load all the blame on Joshua, that worm in a coyote pelt. He was non-too-subtly walking behind her, undoubtedly hoping that if Aetos dropped out of the darkness, the demonic bird would go for her liver first and give Joshua a running head start. 

When the group had split up Noelle had not wanted to be paired with him in any stretch of the imagination, but even she had to, begrudgingly, agree that she was the least likely to kill Joshua out of sheer annoyance. Having him go with Samir and Jang-mi to search the upper floor was sentencing him to, at a minimum, a lifetime curse of ill fortune at the hands of Samir’s djinn magic. All it would take was a poor choice of words on Joshua’s part, and boom, a hasty, regrettable wish given breath and consequence.

And the trio of Sage, Felix, and Brielle, who had been sent to comb the first-floor offices and training rooms, was a guaranteed execution for Joshua. Judge, Jury, and Hangman would’ve sent him right off to the gallows by the night’s end, and the only question would’ve been if they’d do it themselves or use Aetos’ talons. Given Sage’s display from earlier that day, though, Noelle doubted that she would’ve given Aetos the pleasure. Sage had always blamed herself for last year’s events, for bringing Joshua’s treachery to their doorstep, and she must have believed she was ultimately responsible for ensuring Joshua did not get a shot at a repeat performance. Noelle thought that was ridiculous. They all had fallen for Joshua’s feigned friendship, and it didn’t matter that Sage had loved him most, because they all had loved him in some way, right up to the moment when his true colors bled through.

Except for Leilani. She was the one person Joshua’s charm hadn’t fooled or enthralled, and she had kept her distance from him, shielded herself with aloof curtesy. From time to time, Noelle wondered why Leilani hadn’t tried to warn them that a monster lurked in their mist. Why hadn’t she exposed him as a two-faced liar before he had made a play for Jang-mi’s power and jeopardized Danny’s life? The bitter thoughts would pass, however, because Noelle then wondered if any of them would’ve believed Leilani if she had said something. That’s how much love had blinded them. That’s how deceived they all had been. Besides, Leilani probably hadn’t known specifically what Joshua had planned, only that she didn’t like the feel of his aura and that his words carried the faint sting of lies.

Maybe she had been staving off heartbreak for them as long as possible. Noelle could see that easily—Leilani, her beautiful smiles always so sad and so wistful, thinking broken love a worse fate than death. Someone broke her once. Someone took a piece of her and left the rest to float, to drift, as an aching spirit. As a resplendent ghost of heartbreak all out of tears. 

Then came the night of the carnival and Magnus Bane, and it was as if Leilani had been jolted awake, aroused from a despairing sleep. And there was nothing a single resident of O’Keefe Place wouldn’t do to keep the life in her eyes—including scout the basement of a shadowhunter institute in despised company.

“So,” Joshua started jitterily, “how you been, Clarkson? How are things down under sea?”

“Let’s not, Joshua,” Noelle replied.

“Let’s not what?”

“You know what—play nice-nice. The Ninth Commandant tells me not to bear false witness, and playing nice-nice with you will compel me to break it.” Joshua blew out a boar of a snort.

“You’re full on Fey. You literally can’t lie.” Noelle peered over her shoulder to flash him a toothy smile.

“I am a much better liar than you think.” Her grin faded as she rotated her head back forward. “Though, I admit, probably not as good as you.”

“Doesn’t Jesus preach forgiveness too?” He was mocking her. She could hear the ridicule in the lilt of his voice, and she wasn’t sure what made her want to let loose her song more—the derision of her faith or the cruel reminder that a stronger soul—a more human soul—would at least consider forgiving him an option. Did he hear the trill of a murder vibrating in her vocal chords? Did he smell the blood that would never wash away on her hands? Did he see in her the beast her mother had?

“Jesus will forgive you if you’re actually sorry,” she said finally. 

“And you?” He had sped up his pace and was no longer behind her but beside her, and he smiled his wide jokester sneer. Noelle’s boots paused. She knew by the revving of her heartbeat that her eyes were going pupil-less and opaque, raging like a sea storm wave.

“Not even if you were sorry,” she hummed in a sing-song cadence dripping with poisoned honey. “Which you’re not.”

“Chill, chill!” Joshua cried, jumping back. “Shit! I _am_ sorry that I asked!” Eyelids drooping shut, Noelle took two slow, deep breaths. Maybe she wasn’t any better than the common shark. But she had to try to be. She had to try. That’s what Daddy and Mama would want. 

“Let’s just keeping going,” she suggested as she opened her eyes, brown once more if the relaxation of Joshua’s face was anything to go by. “We’re down here for reason after all.”

“Right,” he chuckled awkwardly. “How could we get so off track when there’s a giant killer bird to find? Fun times.”

“Come on. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can leave. And the sooner we leave, the sooner we can go our separate ways.” And the sooner they went their separate ways, the less time the monster in her would have to sing him to his end.

“You used to be fun Clarkson.” 

“I’m fun still. With my friends.” A long minute—maybe a minute and a half—passed in relative silence, the only sound the faint echo of their feet shuffling against rough stone. Noelle didn’t expect the quiet to live long. Joshua’s strength laid in his way with words, and the void of noise was his Kryptonite. And, sure enough—

“What’s the deal with the Daylighter and Leilani?” he asked abruptly. Okay, that question Noelle hadn’t expected.

“What do you mean, ‘what’s the deal’?” she replied guardedly. “And the Daylighter has a name--use it.”

“Okay,” Joshua grumbled, “what’s up with Leilani and _Simon_? Are they a thing? Is that why she invited him to O’Keefe Place?” Noelle pursed her lips. It wasn’t any of his business, and as a fellow Fey, she knew that a grain of knowledge could be just as lethal as any physical weapon. Leilani and Simon… There’s not a word in the English language for what they were. “Friend” lacked the needed connotation of intimacy, but “lover” was too strong and inapplicable in its most basic meaning—for now anyway. Maybe if there a Downworlder version of _parabatai_ , they were it. Closer than friends, closer than siblings, their bond intimate but not sexual. Souls on the same wavelength. 

“Leilani knew Simon all of fifteen minutes when she invited him to O’Keefe Place,” she decided as a reply, sidestepping the real question.

“Fifteen minutes?” Joshua balked. “Tell me you’re joking! Sage didn’t let me get within a hundred feet of O’Keefe Place for a year.”

“And a lot good that did anyone,” she couldn’t help but dig. A clammy hand clasped her elbow and tugged, urging her to stop. With an aggravated trill, she turned halfway around to find Joshua’s wolfish features uncharacteristically solemn, his yellow eyes vulnerable and pleading.

“I mean it, Noelle,” he said. “Why him? What does she see in him?” _That she never saw in me._ The second half of his question hung in the air unspoken but as heavy as smog. With more gentleness than she intended, she eased her arm out of his grip.

“Someone staring down the sun and hoping for darkness,” she answered quietly. “Someone tethered to the world by a single, fraying thread. Someone who knows what it is like to lose everything that ever meant anything.” The trill in her voice faded as her words thickened and became cumbersome on her tongue. “That is what you never understood, Joshua—that you tried to steal from people who had next to nothing left to give and gave what little they had to you.”

She wasn’t crying--she refused to—but the ache of germinating tears burrowed and itched in the bed of her eye sockets. Joshua’s Adam’s apple bobbed, lips parting and seaming shut cyclically.

“I…” he at last managed to croak. “….I—” A groan, low and pitiful, ricocheted off the twist of the corridor, and the conversation died instantly as both Noelle and Joshua unsheathed teeth and claws. A shadow turned the corner first, stooped and dragging across the cobbled wall, and then appeared a hand sliding shakily along the curving stones. It was pale, an icy shade of brown, attached to an arm dressed in a tattered, bloody sleeve. Next, as another groan echoed, came a hunched body limping into the dim light and, with great pained effort, lifted its head.

“Raphael?” Noelle gasped sharply as she closed the short distance between them, arms extending just in time to catch the vampire as he dropped like dead weight. They sank clumsily to the ground, his head lulling over her collarbone.

“Raphael!” she cried again. Her eyes scanned over him frantically and did not take long to spot the angry, scarlet slash that spanned the length of his right side, starting right below his ribs and stretching down to an inch or so above his groin.

“You know him?” Joshua, crunched in a defensive stance, whispered loudly.

“He’s the leader of the Manhattan clan,” she replied anxiously. “He and his clan were staying here for their protection.” _Oh dear Lord_ , she, horrified, thought. _His clan!_ His clan, already so devastated. What if…what if Aetos had finished what the Orpheus Group had started? _Oh, Raphael…_

“Vampire, huh?” Joshua considered aloud. He eyed Raphael’s gaping side. “Obviously, the liver fiend was here. But don’t worry too much, Clarkson. You heard what Sage said. Aetos is a bird of prey, not a carrion. He likes his liver fresh. Probably didn’t realize right away what he was slicing into until he smelled the dead meat.”

“Don’t call him that!” she growled. “Raphael isn’t—”

“ _Belleza_.” Raphael’s breath was as cold as sea spray against her skin. His dark eyes were glassy but seeing as they peered up at her, and the corners of his mouth trembled upward. “You came back for me.”

“Shh, shh,” Noelle cooed. “Don’t talk. We’re here to help. So rest. Rest.”

“ _Belleza_ ,” Raphael exhaled again. “Don’t leave me behind this time…”

“Shh, shh, rest—"

“He can see you,” Joshua, audibly panicky, interjected. Pulling her lips up and back, Noelle clenched her pike teeth.

“Be quiet!” she demanded. “Can’t you see he needs to rest—”

“Clarkson, he can see you!” Joshua repeated forcibly. “He shouldn’t see or hear you! Jang-mi’s illusion has failed! Something—”

A shriek—high, terrible, and murderous—shook the Institute’s very foundation, gravel and chunks of rock falling from the ceiling. Noelle folded her torso over Raphael’s head, enclosing him in a shell of arms and breasts, and, the twist of fear in the pit of her stomach, she silently finished Joshua’s sentence.

Something had gone wrong. Something had gone horribly wrong.


	17. Part II, Chapter 7: The Stuff of Nightmares

Brielle’s baseline was, generously put, unpleasant. A hungry Brielle? Well, Felix imagined the nine circles of Hell combined could match her in neither fury nor fire. Antlers tilted forward like a jousting lance, she stalked ahead of him and Sage salivating for something to tear apart. Really, a starving dog had a better sense of restraint. If only Sage had let Begay tag along, then they could have killed two birds with one stone, or, more accurately, used one bird to kill the other. But, on second thought, it was probably for the best that Begay had slinked off on Noelle’s heels. Being around Begay was like being dunked into a twelve-foot-deep pool of self-pity and indignity, the two-ton pressure of guilt pinning you down far below the surface and salvation. It was bad enough that Sage was stuck in an endless loop of self-castigation, making Felix’s ears ring to the point of nausea.

“Are you really going to make me give it again?” he sighed. Sage lifted a blonde, carefully plucked eyebrow. 

“Say what again?” she murmured.

“The speech,” he clarified, adjusting his glasses. “The ‘It’s-not-your-fault-because-he’s-a-piece-of-dog-shit’ speech.”

“Simon’s right,” she replied with a roll of her deep-set teal eyes. “You have a very bad habit of digging around in people’s heads. I know you and Danny don’t mind people listening in, but most people value their privacy.”

“Then shut the doors. I don’t need to break in to see thoughts that are being tossed out of your head for everyone to hear.”

“Yes, because everyone has clairvoyant abilities to read minds and judge sins.” She coolly flicked her platinum waves back, her way of saying, “Case closed. Next please.” But Felix had never been the type to let people off easily.

“It isn’t your fault,” he persisted. “Because Joshua Begay is a piece of dog shit.”

“A piece of dog shit I tracked into our home.” She answered breezily, casting a laissez faire veneer over her marble white cheekbones, and, contoured by the ribbons of moonlight weaving in through arched cathedral windows, she looked nearly nacreous and resolutely uninterested. However, he sensed the real skin underneath and knew just how taunt with inward bent loathing it really was.

“If it hadn’t been you, he would have found another shoe to stick to.” Sage’s step faltered, just hair, yet a misstep still. She had never asked, and she probably never would, but there wasn’t a day that Felix hadn’t heard her wonder if anything with Begay had ever been real. If there had ever been a moment when his feelings hadn’t been feigned or if she from start to end had been alone in her love. Felix was not certain which answer would hurt her more—that it had been all fake or that there had been love but not enough to stop Begay from throwing a knife at her back. To Felix, it didn’t really matter. Nothing would change. A trespass could not be taken back, scars were permanent, and forgiveness was a far rarer find than people realized. Felix knew that truth firsthand.

“It’s strange,” Sage noted casually. “We haven’t seen a single shadowhunter. Not one. On a floor dedicated to weaponry and fighting. Am I only the one who finds that pellicular?” She was brushing past the burn of Begay again, but this time, Felix let her slide on by. Bruising a sore spot would not be productive right now.

“Most are probably on patrol,” he reasoned. “And Samhain is only a few weeks away. The walls between dimensions are thinning, and more demons are crossing over into our world. I am sure that keeps shadowhunters quite busy.”

“First of all, the rest of the world calls it ‘Halloween.’ Second, it’s all a little too coincidental, don’t you think? The one night the Institute is all but deserted, the one night we planned to infiltrate it, is the same night that Aetos, who hasn’t been seen in years, decides to attack?” Felix used his middle and pointer fingers to push the bridge between his lenses up the incline of his nose.

“Do you think Begay is up to his old tricks?” Her thought trapezed across teal before it, filtered, found its way to her lips.

“He won’t risk Ruth,” she said. “If he cares about anything beyond himself, it’s her. And he wouldn’t have to come us if he wasn’t all out of options. We are his last resort.”

“You’re assuming he has pride, but parasites don’t have pride or dignity. They survive by any means necessary.” Sage glanced at him, teal shifting to a dark, greenish aquamarine.

“You’re saying I give him too much credit.”

“I am saying giving him any credit is too much credit. Don’t try to will him into something he’s not. Not even Samir can grant that wish for you, Sage.” Sighing, she looked away.

“I am not trying to rewrite the past. I am just saying I don’t think he has a hidden agenda this time, no matter how rotten things smell.”

“Yes, something smells absolutely foul,” purred Brielle. “Isn’t mouthwatering?” She had stopped in front of pair of black lacquered doors, already ajar as Brielle stepped confidently through them. Her shadow trailed behind her, its gnarled antlers twisting and reaching.

“Brielle! Wait!” Sage demanded, jogging after her, Felix following closely. The room was a large training space, tatami mats covering the floor from wall to wall, which were decorated with an impressive array of weapons, from blades of every size to lances to arrows and bows to shuriken. But it was not the killing tools that had Brielle’s raptured attention. It was the huddled group of seven shadowhunters, all men, at the room’s center. Their thick runes filled the canvas of their visible skin and stood out freshly painted on the mounds of tightly corded muscles, the cursive symbols rippling as sinew flexed and contracted.

Brielle licked the edges of her spreading smile.

“Well I’ll be damned,” she murmured. “And here I thought I die of hunger before we ever got close to the overgrown bird.” The shadowhunters’ heads snapped up at her hungry hum and had weapons drawn in three seconds flat. 

“Who the fuck are you!” cried the largest of them. His size came from his height, not his girth, and he was more bone than muscle, his hands the biggest part of him. He was neither handsome nor homely, possessing a face easily confused with another or forgotten all together. Yet, the way he held himself as he strode forward, arrogant and authoritarian, made Felix pinpoint him as the band’s leader. 

“They can see us,” Sage, dismayed, noted, yet he heard her only vaguely. His mind was being assaulted, violated, from the tsunami of wrong wafting off the shadowhunters. He heard a girl, closer to a child than a woman, weeping, screaming, pleading, and his stomach rolled with sickened pleasure as the pleas faded to intelligible sobs. The refreshing sensation of remorse he typically felt when a trespass crashed into him was not wasn’t faint or fleeting. It simply wasn’t there. Cobalt sparks pulsed and burst from his fingertips.

“Warlock!” the lead shadowhunter hissed, grasping his long blade in front of him with his two enormous hands. Felix focused on those hands and saw them, so very large, tearing a skirt away from a waist and legs so very small. His wings spread wide, their golden feathers puffed and ruffled.

“Are you sure, Horace?” another shadowhunter asked, cocking a dagger nervously. “I’ve never seen a warlock with a mark like that.”

“Back off, Castleman,” Brielle barked, baby blues flashing at him warningly. “They’re _mine_.” Her snarl brought back some sense of time and place, and he folded his wings against his scapula.

“All of them?” he asked skeptically. She smiled impossibly wide, the corners of her lips quite literally reaching from ear to ear, and blue went black. When she spoke, her voice was not her voice but rather a haunted, echoey rasp.

“ _All_.”

“You think you can take us all by yourself?” Horace laughed harshly. “Not a chance, you disgusting Downworlder!”

“Disgusting?” Felix repeated glacially. “What does that make you then? Considering you what you did to that the moon child—too weak to put up a fight against one of you, let alone all seven.”

Horace’s nondescript face did not give him away, but the tendons of his massive hands tightened. His companions were not as composed, blanching as they looked furtively at one another. Sage narrowed her eyes in understanding and turned her back.

“Come on, Felix,” she beckoned. “Leaving them to Brielle is worse than anything you could devise. We should wait outside. You know she’s a messy eater.”

She was right, so he followed her without further comment, only turning around again to close the doors, and just before they clicked shut completely, his gaze met Horace’s, and the shadowhunter must have finally glimpsed the certain condemnation in Felix ‘s eyes, because that arrogant sneer began to erode.

“Wait—” he started. 

_Click_. The screams began without preamble. The screaming, then weeping, and then pleading that was swallowed by a tremendous shriek that shook the entire cathedral. Arched window frames rattled violently, and the weakest ones broke and descended to the floor in thick splinters.

“What on earth!” Sage gasped as her hand flew to the wall to steady her balance.

“Not ‘on earth,’ Sage,” Felix corrected as the building settled and stilled. “What in the hell?”

 _Click_. The doors opened to reveal Brielle. Her antlers were ablaze in a startling, audacious shade of cherry red light. The rest of her was red too, especially her mouth and chin, smeared with blood and bits of flesh. Sated, she grinned as she used the back of her left hand to wipe her lips clean but only succeeded in spreading red further up her cheek. In her right hand, she clutched a severed limb—a boney forearm sporting an enormous hand. Lackadaisically, she tossed it over her shoulder back into the training room to rot.

“I haven’t eaten like that,” she, dreamy blue-eyed, sighed, “since my death day.”

“Did you belch like that on your death day too?” Sage asked. Typically, Brielle would’ve swatted at Sage for that, but drunk on fully belly, she managed only a quasi-frown.

“Belch? I don’t belch.”

“Oh really? What do you call that just now?”

“Call _what_ just now? All I heard were bones breaking.” Slowly, Sage’s eyes drifted to Felix, and her thoughts zoomed at him unbidden, and adjusting his glasses, he voiced her fear.

“It seems Brielle is not the only one enjoying her dinner.”

“Leilani would like all this green,” Samir said. “It looks like she decorated the place.” It’s the fifth time he’s tried to start conversation, but as with the four previous attempts, Jang-mi remained silent. She observed their surroundings with perfected impassivity. They were in a greenhouse of some kind, the glass ceiling above permitting the moonlight to drizzle in, ferns and bushes collecting the nightly nutrience greedily on their leaves and blooms. One flower in particular snagged Samir’s admiration. The white petals were star-shaped, a cross between a night blooming cereus and a spider lily, and Samir suspected they were responsible for the light, sugary scent perfuming the cool air. If he pretended not remember why they were there, it was romantic, him and her standing in a meadow of midnight flowers.

But he couldn’t forget. Couldn’t forget that Begay, somewhere two floors below, was unacceptable close. Discretely, he snuck a look at Jang-mi’s chest, the spot at the base of her throat where her dainty clavicles met. The high collar of her seventies-esque baby doll dress concealed it, but Samir could visualize the pinkish bead nestled in the small hollow there. That penny sized gem, pretty but unimpressive, had caused Jang-mi more grief than most experienced in a lifetime. That little bead—her race, her family, had been hunted and slaughtered for it. That little, little bead—Begay had tried to kill her for it and complete her kind’s extinction.

“Aetos is not here,” Jang-mi observed. “We should move on.”

“If you ever want to talk about it, I am here,” Samir blurted out, unable to stop himself.

“Talk about what?” Jang-mi asked docilely. Bracing his shoulders, he moved closer to her and reach for her hand, his fingertips grazing the infant soft skin of her palm.

“All of it,” he elaborated. “Begay showing up again. The Fenslage…” Jang-mi did not pull her hand away, but she did not fold it around Samir’s either to complete the hold.

“What is there to talk about?” she replied. “We all know better. Joshua is no ally. And as for the Fenslage—”

“Yes, what about us?” Fire erupted from Samir’s free hand before he could tell his magic to act, and he hurled the furious, smoking ball in the direction from which the chortling, feminine voice had come. But, suddenly, it fizzled, evaporating into harmless puffs of smoke, as if it was nothing more than a candle huffed out.

“Djinn magic,” another voice noted, this one deeper and definitively male. “But, yet, you clearly possess a soul. My sister really does surround herself with the most unusual beings.”

Out of the smoke, tall and broad, came Keahi Everhart. Samir recognized his taunting, imperious bister stare from Shangri-La and found he could still not fathom that such an unfeeling, uncaring man—whose eyes seemed to slice right through you, deeming you unworthy of being seen—had shared a womb with, of all people and of all hearts, Leilani.

“I’m a halfer,” Samir said, coating his tone in bemused bravado. “Mix a Djinn daddy with a human mummy, and boom, you get me.”

“Your ‘mommy’ wasn’t just a mere human, though, was she?” Keahi replied. “Djinn bed humans all the time, but their partners usually don’t live long enough after to bear fruit. Your mother must have had her own magic—strong magic—to make it all the way through pregnancy.”

“She dabbled.” Understatement of the millennia, but like hell Samir was about to let the prick know just how right he was. Keahi chuckled.

“If we had more time, we could test whether your witch mother gave you more than just a soul. But, alas, we are all out of time tonight.” Jang-mi cocked her head to the side, and her long, sleek black hair fell over her smooth, pale cheek, hiding one doe brown eye.

“You can see us,” she said evenly. 

“Of course we can. We aren’t blind.” The female voice’s owner stepped out from behind Keahi, and the insignia of rearing claws on her fitted black jacket said all Samir needed to know about her. He glanced reflexively at Jang-mi, whose expression remained unchanged. If she was breaking—raging—on the inside, she would never let anyone see...including him.

“My sister,” Keahi sighed with a cluck of his tongue, “she has told you so little, hasn’t she? In this, she has followed the laws of our people to the letter, but she has left you so unprepared to face our like. Do you think all she is capable of is coxing earth and urging flowers to spring earlier? No, she is so much more, my sister. She has only shown you only a drop of her power, and if she desired to, she could render your tremendous illusions useless, as I have done. Be glad she has deigned to be your ally, werefox, and not your enemy.”

“Werefox?” the Fenslage female repeated, ice blue eyes flicking dangerously to Jang-mi. “No way—they went extinct over a decade ago. My father killed the last one himself.” Keahi looked over Jang-mi’s slender figure, his gaze lingering on her thighs, or more accurately, behind them, where nine snow-white tails would be if they were in the comforting privacy of O’Keefe Place. But outside of their home, Jang-mi retracted any trace of her heritage, of what and who she was, because history had taught her that the world was treacherous and would take for you all your worth. So Jang-mi kept her cards close to her chest as if trying to fold herself over and over until she was too small to notice. Too invisible to wonder about. But Samir had noticed. Samir had wondered.

And so had Keahi.

“Well,” he went on with an even drawl, “your father, it seems, missed one. An unfortunate mistake for him—werefoxes keep score of every favor and injury, and they always pay back in kind, no matter how many years or generations it takes. Tell your father to take care, Keren. Werefoxes are well versed in the stuff of nightmares and, with a slight of hand, can drive a man mad.” 

Keren’s hand flew to the hilt of a sword strapped to her hip and then bent her knees in a defensive crouch. Jang-mi did not flinch, but her visible eye began to shift in shape, slanting severely as the iris enlarged and transformed from brown to currant crimson. Between them, the air of the greenhouse crackled and hissed, trying to feel out which girl would go for the throat first. Samir primed his smoke in his knuckles, though he was not sure what good it would do if Keahi could really stop magic in its tracks and dissipate it into nothing like fire consuming ice. 

“As I said,” Keahi drawled as he rested a bronze hand on Keren’s wrist, “there’s no time to play tonight. We have what we came for, and my sister will make short work of the demon. We don’t want to be here when that happens.”

“Do you know how many men it took to pen that thing?” Keren posed incredulously. “Fifty! My grandmother, the Daniel Bonne of the trapping industry, had to partner with three other companies, and my aunt says the stress from that hunt is what caused the stroke that took her out of commission for good. And your sister and her flower power are to make ‘short work’ of it?” Keahi released her wrist and smirked.

“That ‘flower power’ is what makes her extraordinary, even among my people. There is no patch of earth you could stand on that will not choose her side over yours. There is no green thing, root, or bloom in your world or mine that has not sworn their allegiance to her. Mock her while you can, because once she learns what you’ve done, you’ll find out how she can make your entire world turn against you with just a passing thought.”

For a second, Keren’s expression lost its smugness, and trepidation clouded her cerulean eyes. But then she blinked, and there was only assured superiority in that hard winter blue.

“Not what ‘I’ did,” Keren corrected. “What ‘we’ did. And we have all the leverage. Let’s see how well your sister grandstands when she figures out that the key to the warlock’s survival is in our hands.”

Alarms started to ring in Samir’s head, the high pitch wail pounding against brain tissue like a mallet against dram. _The key to the warlock’s survival?_ No, no, that couldn’t mean what he feared it did. …Did it? He opened his mouth to demand an explanation, but the cracking of glass stifled his words. His eyes flew up just in time to see great, fat fault lines snaking across the glass panels of the roof above.

Samir realized two things simultaneously: one, the wailing wasn’t just in his head, and two, while the greenhouse glass had managed to survive Aetos’ first crying bellow, it was not going to survive the second.

He snatched at Jang-mi’s hand and willed their bodies to become light, lighter, lighter still, until they were smoke and shadow. Then, he pushed their smoky essence out of the clearing and into a copse of towering palm plants. They solidified there, flesh reassembling, as the roof buckled and broke into millions of shards and hammered down like Amazon rain. 

Safe under the board fanning leavings, Jang-mi tucked beside him, Samir permitted himself a relieved exhale as well as the thought that Keahi talked a good game but couldn’t back much of it up. If he really could stop fey magic with his mere presence, Samir shouldn’t have been able to magick Jang-mi and himself to the protection of the underbrush.

But, when the shower of shards was over, and he and Jang-mi crawled back into the clearing, he understood with mounting dread that he had been capable this feat, because Keahi hadn’t bothered stop him. To stop him, Keahi had to be present.

And Keahi and his Fenslage sidekick were gone.


	18. Part II, Chapter 8: In the Time of Gods

The light padding of Leilani’s ballet flats quieted. A couple steps ahead, Simon halted at the sudden silence and turned back.

“Leilani?” he whispered. “Leilani, what is it?” Pursing her raspberry lips, she slowly lifted a hand and then, fanning her long fingers, slid them along the air, as if caressing a sheer, gauzy curtain. Her lips sunk into a worrisome frown.

“Jang-mi’s illusion,” she finally answered, her amber eyes glimmering amethyst in moonbeam rivulets as they focused on Simon. “It is gone.”

“Gone?” he squawked. He whirled in a sloppy circle, quickly scanning the corridor, lined on both sides by dormitory doors. “So people can see us? How? Did something happen to Jang-mi?”

“…She is all right,” Leilani said as she resumed walking, drawing to Simon’s. “But her power has been nullified. I will explain how later, but we must hurry.”

“Wait, wait—does that mean not just that people can _see_ us, but can really see _us_?” _…Can see me?_ He knew Leilani heard the unspoken question, but she did not respond immediately, and the cinnamon brown skin between her eyebrows crinkled as she selected her next words.

“I am not certain,” she sighed. “Keeping us all from sight demanded more energy and concentration of Jang-mi than the glamour. That illusion was like a wide net stretched wide and thin. It was easy to tear. Glamours, on the other hand, are like layers of paint. They’re not as easy to remove, but they can be chipped away. I think the glamour is still in place, but it won’t hold for much longer, and then…all will see you as you are.”

Simon had been aware that the invisibility illusion could break. He had known that the conquer-and-divide strategy would test the limits of Jang-mi’s powers as they separated and stretched the tendrils of her magic. But he had thought of the glamour of Castor Bleu as a safety valve—the one thing that stood between him and the past life that had almost broken him. Yet, now that shield was crumbling, flaking off his very skin, and he couldn’t stop it. He felt like he was dying all over again. Like the last of his blood was being drained from him, Camille’s viciously hungry slurps ringing in his ears. Like he was on that riverbank waiting on the sun to wield its rays and strike. 

Fingertips, petal soft and soothingly warm, touched his hand.

“Simon,” Leilani said so very gently, so very understanding, “it’s all right. It’s all right if you want to turn back.” Maybe it was because she was giving him permission to be selfish, to keep running and hiding, that he didn’t. It was a choice. It was his choice. He wasn’t all instinct and bloodlust. He wasn’t just what his Turning made him into. He was still Simon, and he still had choices.

“No,” he told her. “We keep going. Alec’s room is just few more doors down. We get in, we get the bow and arrow, and then we get out.”

Leilani nodded, and he took her soft, warm hand into his, tugging her along as he retraced the steps of his very first of the Institute, when he still had been a mundane new to the world of shadows and shadowhunters. Back then, Izzy had given him the grand tour of the fortress, pointing out Alec and Jace’s rooms on the way to the final destination—hers. Simon almost chuckled as he recalled it. He was still Simon, but _that_ Simon, bespectacled, bumbling, and bewildered, seemed so very…distant, almost like a childhood memory that he had been told about more so than actually possessed himself. Never mind that it had only been a little over a year ago.

“This is it,” he announced as they neared the third to last door on the right. He lifted his free hand in preparation of reaching for the doorknob—but there was none. There was no door, just rectangular opening into a dark room. No, not dark.

Blackened. Burned. Alec’s bedroom had been burned to utter ash. Nothing had been left. Nothing. No hint or scrap of what the room might have once contained. No trace. There was no trace of Alec in this burnout hollow. That had probably been the point.

“Shit,” Simon hissed, his fangs popping out of his gums. “Who…?”

Leilani was silent. A breeze ambled in, rustling the tight curls framing her golden cheeks. Releasing Simon’s hand, she took a step into the room, and the ash shrank back, blowing clean away to reveal a worn hardwood floor. Another step, and the black receded further away as if she and it were opposing magnets, a compelled distance ever between them. 

“Leilani?” Simon called after her, but she kept going until the she reached the center of the room, the path behind her starkly demarked by clean, polished wood. Gracefully, she pivoted on the ball of her flats, and the breeze grew stronger and lifted her curls in luxurious, shiny waves of ebony. Her arms lifted, and the ash mimicked her, rising off the floor and walls in black, reverse rain. The dusty curtain rose higher, blocking Leilani from Simon’s view.

“Leilani!” he shouted. He made to lunge into the cloud of ash, but he was propelled backwards as the breeze spun into a gale, shaping the ash into a swirling cyclone. Simon fell on his side, landing painfully on his elbow, but he retained enough clarity to scramble to his hands and knees in time to see purple streak and then overtake the cyclone. Ash black lightened to the deep blue violet of monkshood, and dust became blooms. 

The wind strengthened still, and blue violet blasted a hole to the ceiling above, spraying plaster, wood, and brick spherically across the room. Simon threw an arm across his face to shield against the debris, but he could still see the blue violet, Leilani wrapped in somewhere inside, ascending like smoke through the newly carved carven. 

Instantly, a shriek, terrible and murderous, quaked the Institute to its very foundation, and Simon was shooting to his feet, calling upon his demonic speed, and leaping up after her.

Comparing Aetos to an eagle, in Kosuke Tokugawa’s humble opinion, was undeserved insult to eagles—to the whole of birdkind. Sure, the demon had feathers, but so did dinosaurs according to some accounts, and Aetos was far better compared to those archaic beasts. At an easy eleven or twelve feet, the thing towered over Kosuke’s mere six and snapped its razor beak, wet with red…the red of shadowhunter blood. The blood of fallen brethren. 

Kosuke’s hands squeezed the _tsuka_ of his katana more fiercely. Narrowing his sickly, almost colorless grey eyes, Aetos readied his talons, three two-foot steel blades elongated from each hand. 

“Really now, angel halfling,” Aetos sneered. “Haven’t we established those little toy swords of yours are useless against me?” Kosuke held his gaze steady, though the temptation to scan the floor littered with the broken blades of his comrades dug into his gut. Aetos shook his feathered head with mock despair.

“Nephilim,” he cackled, “thinking yourselves so high and mighty. But I remember how it was before Raziel spawned your sort. I remember how it was in the time of gods. Believe me, halfling, you do not amount to half of their shadow. If they ever decide to come down from their mountain, not even your precious guardian angel could save you.”

Kosuke did not permit himself to absorb the demon’s disdain. It was a favored tactic of hellions, needling weakness and vice, and he would not let the devil stoke anger or pride. If this was his last stand, he’d die because was Aetos was truly stronger, not because Kosuke failed to utilize his every ounce of his skill.

He anchored his stance and adjusted his grip. Almost disinterestedly, Aetos raised his talons higher.

“Very well,” he clucked. “I guess I have room for one more pound of halfling flesh.” Then, faster than a blink of an eye, Aetos swung the talons down, and Kosuke’s reflexes kicked into gear, triceps and biceps contracting to thrust his sword upward. 

But the clash of steel against steel never came, not as an eruption of blue violet rocketed out of the floor between them. Aetos screeched his fury as he was flung across the library and through a series of bookshelves, that, under the massive force of his body and scream, toppled and fell upon him, encasing him in an avalanche of book and parchment.

Kosuke, meanwhile, hit his knees but managed to remain in the same spot as the hurricane of blue violet quelled, breaking apart into a heavy deluge of petals. Using his sword as leverage, he lifted himself onto one knee and was about to stand when he glanced up and found himself frozen. Memorized.

A girl was floating before and above him—an inhumanely beautiful, golden-skinned girl. Her long spiral curls and orchid gown drifted around her lithe, slender figure in dreamy, glossy waves. But it was her eyes—her eyes, more brilliant and deeper than any shade of purple he knew the name of—from which he could not bear to look away.

That stunning, magnificent, unnamable purple focused on him, and the blue petals slowed in their descent, falling more softly, their color changing from monkshood violet to the gentlest cherry blossom pink.

Kosuke’s hand rose and turned over, allowing for a petal to land right between the fate lines of his palm, as gently and tenderly as a first kiss.

Simon ascended into a battlefield of books. Torn pages and broken blades blanketed what was left of the library, tables and bookshelves smashed to smithereens, and he landed crouched in the rubble, sending paper tatters up in dusty puffs. But even in the rising dust, monkshood lightening to cherry blossom was as clear and dazzling as spring sunlight. He had landed behind Leilani’s floating form and was unable to see her face, but the stunned expression of the shadowhunter kneeling before her on the other side of the jagged hole was stark and vivid. He was astoundingly attractive, even by shadowhunter standards, smooth-skinned and dark-eyed, with defined, chiseled features to compliment his lean yet finely muscled body. His lips, plump and pink, parted as he held out a long-fingered hand to Leilani, like a knight swearing his allegiance to a highborn lady.

Drifting down, Leilani reached back, her fingertips grazing his. A phantom heartbeat throbbed in Simon’s chest. Somehow, there was so much…longing in this first meeting, in this moment, so ephemeral yet…so timeless. The cherry blossoms fell around them, donning Leilani’s ebony curls and the shadowhunter’s tousled, jet black waves, and they could be anywhere, anytime, and still look so perfectly natural together.

The gritty rustle of paper caught Simon’s instant awareness, and the strange beauty of the moment was gone, erased as Simon dodged to the left, a compact body sailing past and missing him by a mere hair. It hit the ground and rolled with dangerous momentum, heading straight for the hole in the floor. Simon spied a flash of golden blonde hair, and his stomach spasming painfully with recognition, he leapt after the body and seized it by the back of a black shirt just as a leg fell over the edge. He yanked back and pulled the body to solid ground, but rolling onto his back, Jace displayed no gratitude on his mismatched, blazing eyes.

“Snake…face…” Jace hissed. “I…should’ve…known.”

“Still haven’t figured out friend from foe I see,” Simon sighed, slipping into the guise of Castor Bleu like a second skin. “If I really wanted you dead, shadowhunter, I’ve now wasted two perfectly good opportunities to kill you.”

“Y-you don’t have t-to want me dead,” Jace countered breathlessly, “t-to be…my enemy…” 

“We really don’t have time for this merry-go-round—”

“Agreed.”

It was not possible for a vampire’s blood to turn to ice—death already swam in their veins. So it perhaps was more accurate to say that Simon’s blood hardened to stone, not because of the blade press to the side of his throat, but because of the voice behind it. The voice in every other memory of his childhood. The voice that was the soundtrack of his first crush…of his first love. The voice that had ordered his resurrection. The voice that had betrayed him.

Clary’s voice.

“Where’s Alec?” Clary demanded. “Tell me, or I stake you here and now.” Simon took in a long, unnecessary inhale. Right now, he was not Simon. He was not Simon Before or Simon After. He was not any version of Simon at all. He was Castor Bleu, and Castor Bleu kept his cool. Castor Bleu would go down with a goblin grin spread ear to ear. And so, he, as Castor Bleu, smirked.

“As opposed to later and somewhere else?” he retorted cavalierly, and the blade dug in deeper, drawing crimson drips.

“I told y-you he’s-s a cheeky a son of b-bitch,” Jace coughed. A flurry of heeled boots clattered against the debris, and Izzy, just as gorgeous Simon remembered, was there too, helping Jace to his feet.

“Answer her!” Izzy cried once assured of Jace’s balance. “Where’s my brother? What have you done with him? And why did you destroy his room?”

“So many why’s,” Simon hummed. “It doesn’t matter you how many times you say it—it won’t what change the fact that I don’t have an answer.”

“Stop lying, bloodsucker!” Jace howled. “You let that giant pigeon in here to cause a distraction, and in the middle of the bloodbath, you took my parabatai! And you’re going to give him back, or the moment the sun comes up, I’ll put your ass out to roast!”

The laughter that burst from his mouth even surprised Simon.

“I fail to see what is so funny, bloodsucker.”

“Yes,” Simon murmured as the chuckles subsided. “I’ve noticed that you fail to see quite a lot.” And with that, Simon vaulted, springing to the other side of the chasm as a rush of cherry blossoms rapidly darkening back to monkshood slammed into the trio of shadowhunters. He flew and arched, and, meeting Leilani at the pinnacle of the parabola, he grasped her waist with both hands and pulled her flesh with his body. They stayed there a moment, suspended at the vertex.

Leilani’s dark lashes fluttered, ethereal violet blending into honey amber in her irises. The monkshood twirling around them faded to a light mix of yellow rose and white daisies as Leilani lifted her hands to cup Simon’s cheeks. Her palms were a warm balm.

“Simon,” she whispered. “I see you.”

He knew what she meant. The glamour was fading. He was losing the shield of Castor Bleu. He should’ve been terrified as he was mere minutes ago. He should’ve been terrified. Petrified. But, Leilani’s glow surrounding him, Simon only smiled.

“As long as you see me,” he said. “I’m alright.” 

And then they started to fall.

As soon as she touched him, the girl jerked away from Kosuke, disappearing upward into a floral cloud, its petals instantly reverting back to monkshood. A section of the blue violet branched off from the cocoon, and it zoomed angrily like a swarm of wasps at Jace, Izzy, and Clary. All three of them swatted almost comically at the petals but to no real effect, and the subject of their interrogation, an unsettlingly reptilian faced vampire, escaped Clary’s blade. In a blink, he was gone, soaring into the monkshood storm to the join the golden girl, and once he was safely in the floriated shell, the petal bees retreated to rejoin the hive.

“You scared her!” Kosuke cried as he jogged over to his comrades. Izzy gaped at him, her bright red painted lips falling open like a wilted rose.

“We scared her?” she repeated. “We scared her! She attacked us!” She jabbed a finger at the mass of petals overhead. “She attacked us with—with—”

“Magically changing flowers,” Clary, peering up, finished. “Look, they’re white and yellow now—daises and roses, I think.”

“When we get Alec back,” Jace said testily, “we are so leaving this out of the regaling of his rescue. There’s no way I am telling him or anyone that I didn’t outright crush an opponent whose weapon of choice is a bouquet.”

“She does not seem to be our opponent,” Kosuke observed mildly. “She had a wide opening to take me down, but she didn’t. And she only attacked you when you threatened her friend, who saved you, by the way, from the unpleasant experience of falling through the floor.”

“Don’t get taken in by Violet Dawn’s pretty face, Kosuke,” Jace warned. “That’s the mistake Lorenzo Rey made. The pompous idiot is still entranced. He described to me in impressive detail what he’ll do to my favorite body parts if he finds out we hurt her more than necessary to take her into custody. This was _after_ she crashed his party, strung him along in front of all his friends, and dumped his ass to run back to snake face.”

Her face wasn’t “pretty,” Kosuke wanted to say. It wasn’t just beautiful. It was a sumptuous feast for the eyes. It was Raphael’s inspiration for his Madonna. It was the epitome of grace in all its ethereal beauty. It was spring and sun made flesh.

But he didn’t say this. He didn’t have the chance, not as the hill of battered bookshelves started to quake and rumble. Three, long blade-like talons shot up out of the top of the mound and was quickly followed by a second set, and books and broken shelves went skittering down the mound’s sides as the clawed hands scrambled for purchase. Kosuke and his fellow shadowhunters immediately ready their weapons as Aetos heaved himself out of the literary wreckage. Aside from a few bent feathers here and there, the demon hardly looked worse for wear.

“Damn it!” Izzy groaned. “What is going to take to roast this stupid bird? We’re running out of weapons here!”  


“It’s not like they were doing us much good before,” Jace replied. He kicked a blade shard to emphasis his point. “Might as well be hacking at the thing with sticks. Maybe if we had a chainsaw, then we could crave it up like a turkey.” Izzy lifted a dark eyebrow.

“And where do you propose we get a chainsaw right now? Do you have one stuffed up your—”

“Guys!” Clary cried, interjecting. “Look! The flowers! The flowers, they’re…I think…doing something to him?”

The flowers, at first glance, were merely falling, just a slow, lovely drizzle of yellow and white. But it was the way that shower had Aetos transfixed that made it so unusual. The demon simply stood there as the golden girl—Violet—stepped out of the downpour at the hill’s base and cast a hazel amber eye upon him.

“So,” Aetos sighed, half resigned, half in awe. “I was not mistaken after all. You are Zeus’ kin, though, perhaps more of Demeter’s line than his.”

“Zeus?” Clary whispered. “Did he say ‘Zeus’? As in, Zeus, king of Olympia Zeus?”

“You are mistaken,” Violet murmured. “I do not count those old ones among my ancestors.”

“But you are of the same stalk,” Aetos insisted. “You hail from the same place. Your blood and their blood meet and mix at the same source. It has been centuries—a millennium—since Zeus dispatched me to punish Prometheus for trying to defile his beloved Ganymedes, but I still would know your great kind anywhere, Olympian.”

“No way,” Izzy gasped. “No way…”  


“My people do not call ourselves that,” Violet corrected. Aetos chuckled and nodded.

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “Yes, I know. Your people took away the privilege of knowing your true names eons ago. I knew Zeus’ true name once. I knew what to shout at the sky to summon him down. But that was before Raziel and his infernal cup. Before the Nephillim. I might not remember as much as I once did—I might not recall the real names and must use in the ones recorded by corrupted myth—but I remember. I _remember_.”

Violet’s gaze softened, as if she pitied the creature.

“They say you served the old ones well. That you were not always as you are now. And I suspect that you did not come here of your own volition. But that does not excuse what you have done—what you have aided in.”

“You do not need to explain yourself, Olympian,” Aetos assured. “I remember that the favor of your people is fleeting. And you are right—I do not deserve it as I am now. I should have died when Zeus and the others left. I should have disappeared when the rest of the world forgot the truth. I belonged in an age that is gone—that was erased—but I clung on pathetically, debasing myself until there was nothing to separate me and the common hellion. And I paid for it, Olympian. I suffered indignities at the hands of Nephilim and mundane alike. But I have had my vengeance, and now you are here, kin of Zeus, to see me off to where I belong. It is the ending I should have had a millennium ago.”

“Goodbye, old one,” Violet saluted gently. She raised a cinnamon brown arm, her hand limp at her delicate wrist. “Please—be better in the next life.” 

The bloodied feathers around Aetos’ beak ruffled and fluffed like…like he was smiling.

“I wish I knew the name of my redeemer,” he said. “I am not worthy of such a gift now, but I hope to prove so in the next life. If our paths cross then, Olympian, I pray you will tell me the name to call to summon you from the sky.”

Violet smiled kindly, and by the Angel, if it wasn’t the most exquisite thing Kosuke had ever seen.

“May it be so.”

She flicked up her hand, aiming a slender finger at Aetos, and the gold and petals falling behind her rose in an opulent wave. Swelling to a crest, they fell in a forward rushing torrent, streaming past Violet and tousling her ebony curls in long, spiral curtains. As the tide funneled into a pointed comet, the petals thinned and lengthened before darkening to the green of pine needles—an evergreen spear hurdling toward the very center of Aetos’ chest. But the demon did not run. He didn’t even flinch as the spear pierced his heart, the needles ripping through him in rapid fire succession like a fleet of arrows.

His beak fell ajar, letting loose only a silent scream. And it might have been Kosuke’s imagination, but he thought he saw Aetos’ grey, near colorless iris gain depth and shade. Yes, later, he would swear up and down that, right before he disappeared in an explosion of feathers, a regal, grateful gold burgeoned in the eagle’s eye.

“Who are you?”

For a moment, Simon thought he had spoken aloud, voicing the theme of the ardent questions pounding the walls of his mind relentlessly. _Who are you, Leilani? Who are you—you, who shares a bloodline with gods? Where are you from? What name did Aetos speak of? Do you not trust us enough to tell us? …Do you not trust me? Leilani…who are you? Who are you really?  
_

But it wasn’t Simon had spoken. And the question wasn’t directed at Leilani. 

“Who are you?” Jace repeated, those beautiful heterochromatic eyes pinned on him. “What game are you playing at, snake face? Take it off!”

“Off?” Simon echoed dumbly.

“That glamour!” Jace barked. “That face! How dare you. _How dare you wear his face_. Take it off! Now!”

Oh. _Oh._

“Gees, dude,” Simon murmured mirthlessly. “That’s harsh. We can’t all be God’s gift to mankind, okay? You might be a walking, breathing He-Man, but the rest of us have to work with what little we were given. So you can’t go around telling everyone to rip their faces off because it doesn’t meet your impossible standards.” The gobsmacked expression that washed over Jace’s face almost made Simon burst out laughing. Almost.

“I think you have a very pleasing face,” Leilani said, reaching for his hand. Threading her fingers through his, she gave his palm a light squeeze. He squeezed hers back.

“Thanks,” he replied.

“Simon?” Glancing away from Leilani’s amber, Simon’s stare settled on Clary, whose green irises swelled as they soaked in the truth. Her seraph blade fell against her black-clothed thigh.

“Simon,” she uttered again, tears prickling the corners of her eyes. “Is that you?” 

A moment of silence. An unnecessary breath filling his lungs.

“Magnus,” Simon exhaled. “Magnus is safe.” Clary took a step toward him.

“Simon—” 

“We didn’t take Alec, but I have a pretty good idea who did.”

“Answer me, Simon! Is it you?” She made to seize another step, but Jace caught her by the elbow.

“Clary, wait!” he warned roughly. “Don’t be fooled. This is probably another trap—”

“We’ll get him back, Jace,” Simon cut in smoothly. “ _I’ll_ get him back. I owe you that much, don’t I?”

Blue golden snapped to Simon. Simon grinned contritely.

“That, and a new leather jacket. I did quite the number on your last one. I don’t know what is with me and jackets, but I always find a way to ruin them—just ask Raphael.” Jace’s fingers slipped away from Clary’s arm.

“…Si…Simon?” he asked.

“We’ll get Alec back,” Simon promised one last time. “We’ll bring him and Magnus back home.”

And with that, he pulled Leilani into his arms and leapt for the carven in the floor. Jace and Clary’s screams chased after them.

“Simon, wait!”

“ _Simon!_ ”

The calls failed to catch them, and he and Leilani fell into the shadows below.


	19. Part II, Chapter 9: A Trick of the Light

The Institute had been reduced to a war-ravaged wasteland. Glass shards, crumbled stone, and blood littered every room and corridor, and corpses seemed to be sprawled around every corner. The main training room in particular was apparently teeming with carnage so atrocious that it had turned the stomachs of even the staunchest of the Institute’s most seasoned soldiers.

“Remember the remains of the Circle member we found four nights ago?” Andrew Underhill reported. “It’s like that, except times seven. I’ve never seen anything like it. They were all…decimated.”

“Do we know who?” Izzy asked, soliciting a noncommittal shake of the head from Underhill.

“There’s really not enough left to identify most of the bodies. The only one we could ID with any certainty is Horace Dearborn. A hand wearing his family’s ring was found. We’ll have to do some testing, but we’re pretty sure it’s him, which means the other six bodies are probably members of his cohort. But we won’t be a hundred percent certain until we can run some tests.”

“Dearborn?” Izzy repeated. “He wasn’t exactly my favorite person—and his beliefs about Downworlders are…were disgusting—but I don’t know that he deserved to die like that. Torn to pieces…by the Angel…”

“What did it?” Kosuke inquired, crossing his arms. “Surely not Aetos. From what I saw, he always went straight for the liver.”

“Agreed,” Underhill concurred. “Aetos was not to the type to play with his food. As you know already, he was not the only intruder, and it’s the general consensus he was used as a distraction while someone abducted Alec. But who and why is anyone’s guess at this point. It’s not clear how many intruders there were, and they may have not all been working together.”

“Well, we know of at least four,” Izzy said. “I just visited Raphael in the hospital wing, and he told me that he came across two on the lower floor after he fended off Aetos. He swears one of them was the girl who rescued him after him his clan’s massacre and took him to the Jade Wolf. She saved him this time too, but she wasn’t alone. There was someone else with her, a guy. Raphael thinks he’s probably fey because of his scent. So that’s two, and then there’s…”

She trailed off, but Clary easily went where she couldn’t bring her voice to go.

“And then there’s Simon,” Clary finished. She spoke with an enthusiasm Kosuke found a degree unseemly, given the pungent stench of death pervading every sense.

“Simon and Violet,” she went on. “They were here to help. They’re trying to help us.”

“Were they?” countered Jace quietly. He was standing apart from the rest of them and in front of a large monitor screen, on which looped grainy footage of the night’s events. Most of the cameras had been damaged and disabled by Aetos’ assault, but a few had survived, though their testimony had little to offer beyond shifting shadows. “If they were to help, why didn’t they stay and explain what the hell is going on?”

“Maybe Simon is trying to protect us,” Clary argued, her volume rising. “Maybe he’s afraid that we’ll get too involved.”

“Too involved?” Jace echoed dangerously. Slowly, he turned around and pinned his heterometric stare onto Clary’s thundering emerald green. “Too involved? A quarter of the Institute is either dead or on their deathbed. Magnus has been missing for weeks. Now my parabatai has been kidnapped, and we can’t track him because everything he ever owned has been burned to cinders. Too involved? We are up to our necks in this shit, Clary, and the one person who has answers has bailed again and again! And you really think he was here to help?”

“Simon would never do anything to hurt us—to hurt me!”

“You don’t know _that_ Simon!” Jace cried. “The Simon you knew—the Simon you grew up with, the Simon who was your ‘bestie’—is dead. Camille Belcourt killed him, and when we tried to play God and resurrected him, a different Simon came back.”

“That was my Simon,” Clary insisted as she took a bold step toward Jace. “I would know him anywhere, and I know what I saw—that was my Simon. He’s my Simon.”

“A trick of the light, Clary,” Jace sneered. “A trick of the light.”

“Stop it!” Izzy snapped. “Both of you! Arguing will get us no closer to bringing Alec home.”

“And Magnus,” Clary added on defiantly. “Simon said Magnus is safe, which means Alec wasn’t enthralled by that pendant. He really was sensing that Magnus is alive. Violet must have given it to him as a kindness—to let him know that Magnus is alright.”

“Her name is not Violet,” Jace, equally as insolent, pointed out. “You heard the giant vulture: whatever kind creature she is doesn’t like to give out its real name. I thought I heard snake-face call her by a different name at the ball, but because my ears were ringing after the explosion, I thought I had heard wrong. ‘Violet Dawn’ was probably just part of her cover story to infiltrate the party.”

“Whatever her name is, she is obviously a friend of _Simon’s_ ,” Clary said, “which means she’s our friend too. She banished Aetos, didn’t she? She could have just let him kill us.”

“Doesn’t it concern you at all that she beat a demon with a flick of the wrist that the four of us combined couldn’t scratch with swords?” Jace demanded. “She’s just as powerful as a greater demon, which makes her just as dangerous, and ‘Simon’ is following her around in whatever face he feels like putting on for the night. Would your Simon do that?”

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that they aren’t the enemy?” Clary challenged. “They might be holding more cards than us, but have they used those cards to hurt us? To actually hurt us? I think all Simon’s tried to do is the opposite, which is _exactly_ like my Simon.”

“ _He let us think he was dead_!” Jace roared! “If it’s Simon—if it is really Simon—then he left us to suffer and grieve for nothing all this time. He let his “death” hang over us like an axe for over a year! He might not be dead, but we were clearly dead to him!”

Quiet dropped like sleet: hard, cold, sharp. Clary tilted her chin up, as her eyes narrowed at Jace. He held her stare, blue and gold unflinching in the face of emerald fury. Warily, Izzy stepped into the line of fire.

“I said stop. it.’” she grounded out. “We are wasting time.” She looked to Clary. “Simon’s been wearing disguises. That’s a fact. Who else is he hiding from if not us? He’s avoiding us, which means he doesn’t trust us, not completely—” Clary’s lips parted to protest, but Izzy was already swiveling to glare at Jace. 

“—but he is not the enemy,” she added. “I agree with Clary. He—and Violet, or whatever her name is—have been trying to help us, maybe even protect us. They saved us tonight. In fact, they saved you twice. So, I think they’ve earned the curtesy of a little bit of faith from you.”

Jace’s lip curled up into a snarl, but he said nothing as he turned back to the monitor. Her fingers folding into fists, Clary spun around, her long locks flying behind her in ribbons of red gold.

“Forgive me,” Kosuke murmured to Izzy as Clary stormed off. “But who is Simon?”

Her dark lashes fluttering closed, Izzy released a lengthy, lethargic sigh.

“Simon,” she, opening her eyes, murmured, “is a long story—one best told somewhere a little more private.”

Izzy led Kosuke outside to a deserted courtyard behind the Institute. It was a forgotten place, neglected and left to the weeds, and it was hard to tell which cracks were inflicted from age and which were fresh scars from the winged demon’s assault. Izzy stopped by a crumbling fountain, its fount of a battle-ready angel long dry and armless, and she titled her head back so her near black eyes could scan the late night sky, which was lacking its own shine, the city lights having swallowed the stars whole.

“You remember, right,” Izzy began, “when I told you that Clary has only been aware that she is a shadowhunter for little over a year?” Kosuke nodded contemplatively.

“I remember,” he confirmed. “Though, to be honest, I knew before you told me. We heard of Valentine Morgenstern’s daughter even in Kyoto.” He briefly thought of Chouko, his parabatai, and how the story of Clary Fairchild had fascinated her—inspired her. A girl who had managed to rise, to soar, and break the shackles of her father’s sins—that’s a triumph grand enough to relight the spark of Chouko’s dreams.

“Well,” Izzy sighed as she lowered her eyes, “one thing you probably didn’t hear in Kyoto is that when she first encountered the Down World, she wasn’t alone. Her best friend since practically birth came with her. As Clary would say, they were a package deal. If you got one, then you got the other. His name was Simon Lewis. And he was a mundane.” She hesitated a moment, her breath sharpening on an inhale.

“That changed,” Kosuke prodded gently.

“The Down World is no place for a mundane,” she snapped, voice cracking. “We tried telling them, him and Clary. But they were both so stubborn, and it was too late any way. Word of Valentine’s daughter and her alleged possession of the Mortal Cup had already spread like wildfire. Downworlders, demons, Circle members—they all came for her, and it didn’t take long for someone to figure out that the best way to get to Clary was through Simon. That someone was Camille Belcourt, the leader of the Manhattan vampire clan. She had Simon kidnapped in order to exchange him for the Cup, and while he was her prisoner, she played with him. Fed on him. Had him feed on her.”

It was as if Izzy was suddenly regurgitating the story, because the words were hurdling out of her, rushing off her tongue in a verbal torrent.

“Maybe she wanted to get him addicted, maybe even turn him into a subjugate. Maybe she was just bored. But either way, she took it too far… She…”

The torrent halted, and Izzy heaved but, all out of words and breath, came up with nothing.

“…She killed him,” Kosuke surmised. “She took too much, and she killed him.”

“Raphael brought him to us,” Izzy said roughly. “He was dead. His life as a mundane was over. The question was what kind of afterlife he would have. Raphael left the decision up to us. Up to Clary.”

“And she chose to turn him.” The black-brown gems of Izzy’s eyes, polished with a sheen of tears, turned glossy. Ruefully, she smiled.

“Clary tried to let him go. She did. She and Jace went to Simon’s house to tell his mom he was gone, but she couldn’t go through it…couldn’t accept a world without him, not when she could have one with him in it. So, yes, in the end, she chose to turn him.”

“I…I can’t imagine how hard that must have been,” Kosuke said, shifting his weight. “It is an impossible choice. Lose someone you love yet send them off as you knew them…or hold onto them, but in keeping them, maybe erasing everything you loved about them.”

Maybe erasing the love itself. If he ever had to make a choice like that, which would he choose? Which kind of pain—which kind of loss—he would deem more tolerable? Which choice was more humane? The braver one, the less selfish one? Which choice was the best way to love someone you love?

“Simon didn’t see it that way,” Izzy murmured as she quickly whipped away her tears before they could bloom and fall. “After he crawled out his grave and fed for the first time, he was quite certain that there had only been one acceptable choice—and it was not the choice that had been made. He didn’t accept what he had become…what we had made him into. For weeks, he ran, hid, refused to feed. No one could talk sense into him. Raphael tried for a little while, but then he went to war with Camille for control of the clan, and Simon wasn’t a priority. Clary couldn’t get within ten feet of Simon without him running off, and by the time Luke cornered him, Simon was practically feral and didn’t see Luke, just a werewolf. We thought by turning him we were saving him, but we were really losing him all over again.”

She stopped again to palm away another watery onslaught.

“Funny enough,” she chuckled bitterly, “it was Jace who decided enough was enough. He never liked Simon much, but he was tired of seeing Clary so upset. So with Magnus’ help, he tracked Simon down and forced fed him his own blood. He even let Simon take so much that he passed out, and Magnus had to stop Simon from taking more, but it worked apparently. For a moment or two, Simon was clearheaded, enough that Magnus was able to talk to him and be heard.

And then…then Circle members attacked them. It was an ambush—they were outnumbered twelve to two. Magnus fended them off as long as he could, but eventually he exhausted his magic…so Simon stepped in. And it wasn’t pretty, the aftermath. He eviscerated them all…drained them dry. All of them.”

Izzy’s voice diminished to a near whisper.

“…he called Clary after,” she said, “and told her he couldn’t live as a monster one night more. He told her he was going to face the dawn and finish what she never should have started. He hung up before she could say or do anything, and we never saw or heard from him again. Clary didn’t want to track him. She insisted Simon was alive and just needed space—that he would come home when he was ready. We all assumed that she didn’t want evidence of the truth, because if she had it, then she would have to accept he was gone. Because that’s what we all thought…that he had died that day at dawn.”

“…until last night,” Kosuke amended. Izzy nodded.

“Until last night. And Clary’s right—he was definitely more himself than the last time anyone saw him. But Jace isn’t wrong either. Things aren’t the same. This is a Simon we don’t really know. A Simon who doesn’t trust us. A Simon maybe we shouldn’t trust either. I don’t know really what to do…what to even think.”

“Your friend,” he replied, his voice soft and smooth, “he went through something traumatic—altering. It would be unkind to him to expect him to be the same person in all ways. But from what I could see, I think it would also be unkind to believe he doesn’t care about you still. Someone who doesn’t care doesn’t do what he did. You may not be able to go back to what you had before, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move forward.”

Izzy smiled tightly, her red painted lips pressed together in an upward curved grimace.

“I hope you’re right,” she said. “I do. But where do we start? We’ve got nothing to go on.”

“Not nothing,” Kosuke disagreed. “In fact, we got quite the something—quite the someone. We have the person with the answers.”

“The person with the answers,” Izzy repeated. Her dark, expertly lined eyebrows knitted before the creases in her pale forehead smoothed over with understanding. “You mean Simon? You heard Jace. Simon keeps running away—”

“Then let’s give chase. We may not be able to track Alec, but we, I bet, can track Simon.”

“Track him? No, we can’t—”

“Why not?” Kosuke insisted. “You said that you didn’t track him before because you were afraid of what you’d find. But now you know what’s waiting to be found. Now you need to go look for it and face it. Now you need to face him. The question is will you?” 

She didn’t answer him and instead pivoted in her heels, turning away to face the fountain angel, whose solemn, stone stare remained fixed ahead, ready and unyielding. Walking to her side, Kosuke grasped Izzy’s shoulder.

“For years,” he murmured. “I watched my parabatai try to run from the history she had inherited. Her family name carries the stain of a very terrible sin, and she thought if she ignored it, whitewashed it, swept it under the rug, she could leave it behind it her. But it wasn’t until she acknowledged it and accepted that it had happened and would also be always a part of her story, did she actually begin to move past it. ‘It is a part of me,’ she told me, ‘but it didn’t have to define me or my future.’ She actually told me that after she learned the story of a girl who was born Clarissa Morgenstern but grew up to be Clary Fray.” Izzy chuckled at that, and Kosuke grinned as he gave her shoulder a little squeeze.

“So are you saying I should be more like Clary?” she scoffed teasingly. Shaking his head, Kosuke pulled down his grin.

“I am saying sins happen. Our own, our family’s, our friends’. They happen despite our best intentions. They happen _because_ of our best intentions. Excuses, guilt, pride won’t undo them. They happen, and they hurt, and they can leave scars generations deep. But we can do our best to repair the damage. We can do better. We can be better. But, to do that, we must recognize our fault first. You sinned against your friend and hurt him. You did what you did out of love, but it was still hurtful, and the hurt will still have happened whether you face him or not. But if you want to make amends—if you want to move forward—then running away is moving in the wrong direction.”

“…What if he doesn’t want to forgive us?”

Izzy and Kosuke both turned toward the meek question. A few feet away stood Clary, shoulders hunched, her hands still clenched in fists. Behind her, slouched and arms crossed, was Jace watching warily.

“What if…,” Clary said, “…what if he doesn’t want anything to do with us?”

“Then you cross that bridge when you get there,” Kosuke replied, “but first you have to get there.” Clary jerked her chin up and down in a curt nod and drew in a deep, steadying breath. Exhaling, she thrust out a first, turned over her hand, and unfurled her fingers. Sitting squarely in the middle of her palm was a thin, black plastic triangle. 

“Ok,” Clary announced, “then let’s get there.”


	20. Part II, Chapter 10: Attribute of the Strong

Dawn had never looked so dull, its pinkish oranges so bland and unaspiring. From his bedroom balcony, Simon stared the horizon down, trying to will the usual awe and gratitude to the forefront of his heart, but the beat-bereft organ stayed still and hollow.

Trudging home in the fleeing night, they had brought nothing back to O’Keefe Place except for the indignity of failure, and there was no hiding from it in the dreary daylight. The others had shuffled off to scrounge up what sleep they could, Sage shooing Joshua away like a cook might herd a rat out of her pantry.

“We had a deal!” Joshua had hissed when Sage had refused to let him so much as set a toe on the driveway’s asphalt.

“Yes, we did,” Sage had agreed stiffly. “And we’ll keep our end, because unlike present company, a promise actually means something to us. But right now, we’re little busy.”

“But—”

“Is Ruth going to die tomorrow? Or the day after?”

“No, but—”

“Well, Magnus Bane and his boyfriend just might. So, they have to come first. We’ll contact you once this taken care of. Until then, I don’t want to so much as to smell you.”

And then she had turned her back and strutted away down the driveway as if it were a catwalk, leaving Samir to stare Joshua down until the shifter took his cue and sulked off, irises flashing a dissatisfied yellow as he went.

Waiting on the sun to fully breach the horizon, Simon thought of that yellow now, that burnt, brooding shade of mustard that seemed to have more light and fire than the rising star ahead. He thought of how it had lingered on Leilani as she had drifted into the woods, the emerald leaves reaching down to veil her from sight. What had Joshua hoped for, Simon wondered. For Leilani to look back? For her to offer some silver of…of what? Acknowledgment? Pity? That, to Simon, showcased Joshua’s selfishness more than his housemates’ furious distrust. 

Leilani was not in a state to offer pity, not after tonight. Not after her own brother, her twin, had betrayed her. How could anyone ask her to give anything when she was on the edge of losing so much at the hand of the one person who’s supposed to love her the most…the best?

“That bastard,” he cursed under his breath. “That damn bastard.”

“You talkin’ about me or Leilani’s gem of a brother?”

Glancing up and to his left, Simon was only mildly surprised to find Joshua precariously draped over the balcony railing, his back slumped against the house’s brick and his leg swinging to and fro along the balusters.

“Seriously, man?” Simon sighed. “Crashing through a second story window wasn’t enough? You want to try skydiving from a balcony now? I think Sage is right—you must have a death wish.”

“You aren’t going to kill me, Simon,” Joshua replied. He spoke plainly, no sly grin to tilt his words. Simon snorted.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because you’re a daylighter,” Joshua answered easily, “and you don’t know what that means beyond the obvious. You got no clue you’re in a whole other class from not just vampires but all downworlders, because you’ve never thought to explore your powers. And that’s because you, whether standing in sun or shadow, hate being a vampire. Besides, if you really wanted me dead, you would’ve let Brielle gore me and been done with it.”

“I didn’t stopped Brielle for you,” Simon corrected stiffly. “I stopped Brielle for Brielle. She would’ve regretted damning an innocent girl, even if that girl happens to be _your_ sister.” Chuckling unsmilingly, Joshua dropped the crown of his head back until it touched brick.

“Brielle ran out of regret a long time ago. She’s only got her anger now. That’s how deer women are…they’re born out of fury and woe, and, eventually, they run out of the woe.”

“Fury and woe? No one told me you’re a poet. And don’t talk about Brielle like you know her.”

“But I do know her,” Joshua insisted without heat. “I’m shockingly awesome at figuring out what makes people tick—and I don’t have Castleman’s little parlor trick of reading minds.”

“But you do have a bag of tricks, right? You said so yourself.”

“All fey have a bag of tricks, Simon, not just coyote shifters. And that includes the fey in this house, Jang-mi in particular. Her bag holds more than most.”

“Her name really shouldn’t be coming out of her mouth, considering that you tried to kill her.”

“‘Tried’ being the key word. Don’t let those big, sad brown eyes fool you. She’s wilier than I’ll ever be. You know, looking back, I think she knew what I was aiming for the moment I walked through the door. At least, she suspected. She probably suspects everyone and sets all traps around her. I am willing to bet she enjoys it too—watching the predator draw close, letting them think they got her cornered, and relishing the look in their eye when she pulls the lever and watches them fall. If Danny hadn’t walked in that day, I’m not so sure I’d be here right now.”

“You shouldn’t be here at all,” Simon snapped as he braced his hands against the cold stone of the railing. “And, after what happened to her family, can you really blame Jang-mi for being constantly on guard? They were slaughtered for their power, and you wanted to do the same to her. You validated her fear. You violated her home. You abused her friendship. You exploited her—all of them. But, somehow, you still show up here, banking on their help. You’re a piece of work.”

Lifting his head, Joshua gave him a long look.

“So that’s it,” he said finally.

“That’s what?”

“What Leilani sees in you,” Joshua clarified. “That plucky sense of loyalty. That ability to empathize. That above and beyond caring. She saw a kindred spirit. Someone she could rely on and share things with… A friend. She saw a friend.”

“And what’s so special about that?” Simon dismissed with a shrug of his shoulders. “Most people understand the basic concept of friendship, like, for example, not trying to murder one another. You are the exception.”

“Maybe,” Joshua conceded mildly. He turned away, casting his stare out over the horizon, which was now beginning to brighten to a goldish blue. “In my world though, Daylighter, giving someone the presumption of decency is a surefire way to get screwed over. Or die. My own mother was willing to trade me for a bit of power, and she would have if she hadn’t put too much stock in the love of her lover. She was betrayed, just as she had betrayed me, and when she lost her head, I promised myself I’d keep mine. No one would ever get enough of me to use it against me.”

“So you decided to become a self-centered douchebag that worms its way into other people’s lives and weaponizes their trust? Ok, so you had a crappy childhood, but that doesn’t excuse what you did. Make no mistake, man, I am not going to feel sorry for you. Ever. I’m on their side.”

“I’m not looking for sympathy, not for me anyway. My sister, Ruth… She’s nothing like me. She presumes people are decent. She thinks the best of others before she considers the worst. She’ll put herself on the line to fight for someone’s rights, and she cherishes life in all its forms. She doesn’t deserve a demon’s curse, but she does deserve your sympathy. She deserves your friendship.”

Despite his best efforts, Simon could feel his indifference cracking.

“You heard Sage,” Simon said more softly than he intended. “We’ll keep our promise to help Ruth.”

“I know. I know you will. Thing is…it’s not a promise I should have asked you to make.” Joshua stood, natural balance allowing him to stroll along the railing until he reached its center. “The truth is I have had the tools all along to save Ruth. I didn’t you need to save her. I needed you to save me. I was going to use you and the others to cheat the curse. Cheating got me into this mess, but I was sure cheating would get me out.”

“You _were_ going to use us?” Simon noted. “Does that mean you’re not anymore?”

Planting his turquoise converses on the balcony’s middle, Joshua faced the sun.

“…My sister’s favorite quote,” he said, “is from Gandhi: ‘Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.’ My sister is the strongest person I know, so when she comes looking for me and my story, tell her the truth.”

“Wait, what?” Joshua smiled over his shoulder, his grin wide and wily but genuine.

“You strike me as the kind of guy who likes to soften the blow,” he murmured, “but, like I said, my sister is strong. So strong. So, when Ruth comes, don’t sugarcoat a thing. Tell her about the real me. Or ask Leilani to do it. Leilani won’t say anything that isn’t true.”

Simon’s stomach twisted a small degree. It was Joshua’s placid tone, his untroubled smile. He was speaking like a man who had made his peace.

“Joshua—”

An earsplitting yowl sliced through the morning air, immediately followed by the thunderous crash of wall and plaster breaking. Joshua’s smirk stretched a little wider.

“Sounds like Eshana’s got something in her claws. You should go. I gotta say, as crazy as she is, I missed her. I missed them all.” 

And then he turned back around and leapt from the railing, seemingly disappearing into the light.

Despite being likened to a guard dog on a near daily basis, there was in fact nothing canine about Eshana. From the navel up, she was all Bollywood bombshell, smoldering eyes of garnet brown and blown out waves of obsidian. From the navel down, she was all scales and serpent’s tail, massive muscles of a king cobra’s charcoal and sand yellow bands. And she was tall and long, a near fifteen feet altogether, and that gave her the easy ability to constrict Izzy and the Asian shadowhunter from last night in her coils while simultaneously slamming the thick tip of her tail into Clary’s middle, sending the redhead soaring into the Grand Foray’s chandelier. Clary and crystals plummeted, and at the sickening sound of both colliding with the marble floor, Jace sprung forward, dagger in hand, but Eshana’s open palm spiked him like a volleyball with such force that Jace appeared to lose his senses. His mismatched eyes started to roll back, and the blade dropped from his suddenly lax grip as he hurdled headfirst for the floor.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Simon jumped the entirety of the foray’s stairs and landed in just time to catch Jace in his outstretched arms.

“Eshana!” Simon cried. “Eshana, stop! Please! Stop!” Instantly, Eshana stilled and flicked her eyes down to Simon, their serpentine slits narrowing.

“Ss-imon,” she hissed, her forked tongue slipping out between her plump lips, “are thesse…friendss of yourss?”

“Err,” Simon hedged. “I… know them, and I prefer them alive.” Raising an eyebrow, Eshana folded her arms over her blue tank top.

“You s-should have told me they were coming. And they s-should learn how to usse a doorbell. S-hhadowhunterss s-sneaking about iss eassy to missinterpret.”

“Believe me,” Simon chuckled, “had I know they would be stopping by, I would’ve been sure to ask them to use the front door.”

“S-so, they were trying to s-surpris-se you?” Eshana appeared to roll this thought around in her mind before revealing her elongated, curved incisors in a beaming grin. “How s-sweet!” The coils of her tail loosened and retracted, and Izzy and the other shadowhunter collapsed on their hands and knees, their chests heaving eagerly for air.

“They’ll be ss-taying for breakfas-st then,” Eshana continued. “I’ll make ex-xtra waffles-s.”

“No thanks,” Jace coughed hoarsely. “We ate.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t question,” Simon whispered as Eshana slithered away toward the kitchen. “You’re eating waffles. Word of advice: don’t leave anything on the plate. And I mean nothing, not even a drop of syrup. Lick it clean.”

“Was that…a naga?” the Asian shadowhunter forced between haggard breaths. “Aren’t they…extinct?”

“No, can’t be,” Izzy wheezed. “She’s way too pretty. Nagas were famous for being decidedly unappealing to look at.”

“Please take care, shadowhunter. If Eshana hears you, she will be offended on the behalf of her ancestors, and as you just experienced, she is not someone you want to start a fight with.”

Leilani’s voice was as demure and quiet as a flutter of rose petals as she padded down the far staircase in a lacy peasant dress of begonia orange. She had tied her curls into a high ponytail with a matching scarf, the tendrils of which floated behind her like richly auburn maple leaves on an autumn wind. Her air was unassuming, but Izzy and her comrade straightened to attention as she reached the bottom of the stairs and made her way over to Clary, whose movements were as small and pathetic as that of a fledging robin with crushed wings. Gracefully, she sank down onto her haunches before gingerly moving Clary’s flame red hair away from her neck and collarbone, revealing a rune that resembled an overlapping cursive “J” and “E.”

“Hey,” Jace barked roughly, trying to push himself out Simon’s arms, “get away from—” His command evaporated on his tongue when Leilani waved her hand over the rune. Instantly, the coal black ink became a bright, burning red, its power ignited and spreading rapidly through Clary’s body, her wounds sewing seamlessly shut. 

Jace fell back again against Simon’s chest.

“What,” he gasped, “what exactly are you, Violet Dawn?” Leilani’s lips spread into a yellow tulip of a smile.

“I prefer to be called Leilani,” she replied as she stood. The Asian shadowhunter mirrored her movements, quickly hoping to his feet.

“Leilani,” he repeated breathlessly. “It is very nice to meet you. I am Kosuke Tokugawa of the Kyoto Institute.” Leilani inclined her head forward in greeting. 

“Hello, Kosuke.”

“You didn’t answer Jace’s question,” Izzy accused as she too found her footing.

“And, for intruders, you are being supremely rude, demanding answers to questions you have no right to ask.”

All eyes flew up to find the source of the viciously lazy drawl and found it leaning against the polished wooden bannister railing that lined the second flooring landing. Brielle’s antlers were still massacre crimson, and her grin promised more blood to come.

“Shadowhunters,” she sneered. “Always so high and mighty. So self-righteous and so entitled. But, in the end, you are no better than the common perv.”

“Deer woman,” Jace cried disbelievingly. His mismatched star looked up questioningly at Simon. “Simon, was she with you last night? Did she—”

“Enjoy your _exemplary_ associates?” Brielle finished. “Yes, I did, and they were positively vile. But if you know what I am, then you know that I’ve committed no crime.”

“Nothing wrong?” Izzy spat. “You tore seven men apart!” Brielle’s grin grew even more bloodthirsty as her blue eyes slid to Jace.

“Do you want to tell her, pretty boy, or do I get the pleasure of bursting that bubble?”

“She’s a deer woman, Izzy,” Jace said, swallowing. “Her diet is very…particular. And she’s telling the truth: when she kills to eat, she’s completely exempted under the accords. Her prey…they’re deserving of what they get.”

“What your friend is very trying to tell you oh so very delicately,” Brielle added wickedly, “is that I only eat molesters, rapists, and the all-around depraved. You know, my last two meals were solely shadowhunter blood and bone. Funny, isn’t, that I would find such hearty meals among what is supposed to be the epitome of angelic justice here on earth?”

“Come now, Brielle, it is too early for you to be a terror,” Felix yawned as he, closely followed by Danny, stepped out onto the landing.

“Well, what do you expect,” she growled, “when I go to bed at 3 a.m. and get woken up three hours later by shadowhunters helping Eshana with her morning exercise?”

“Shadowhunters?” Danny murmured. His pupil-less eyes narrowing, he started tugged to tug off his leather glove, but Felix grasped his thin wrist.

“No need for that, love,” Felix reassured. “These shadowhunters are the friendly kind.”

“There’s a friendly kind of shadowhunter?” Samir questioned dubiously. He stood at the top of the staircase nearer to Simon and Jace. “And here I thought they only came in varying degrees of douchebag.”

“Just how many roommates do you have, Simon?” Jace asked. His gaze was darting smoothly like a surveying hawk taking stock of the terrain.

“More than enough to outnumber you, shadowhunter.” Sage, flanked by Noelle and Jang-mi, glided past Samir and, at deliberate pace, started down the stairs. Her teal gaze flashed an electric emerald. “So state your business, and be quick about it. My tolerance and patience have already been depleted today, and I am not in the mood to play gracious hostess.”

“Please, we don’t mean any harm.”

Clary held her palms up as she spoke, her artist hands attempting to erase the drawn battle lines. She looked directly at Simon.

“We just want to talk,” she said. “Please.” Felix cocked his head and adjusted his glasses.

“I see,” he observed out loud. He snapped fingers, and cobalt magic burgeoned at their tips as the golden feathers of wings perked and ruffled. “I can take care of it for you, Simon, free of charge.”

“Oh,” Brielle hummed, catching on excitedly. “So much for the ‘faultless’ heavenly warrior race. You’re nothing more than a bunch of damned hypocrites.” No doubt sensing the malintent, Jace was immediately out of Simon’s arms and on his feet, rushing to Clary’s side.

“Try it, Warlock,” Jace snarled, “and I’ll run you through!”

“No, Jace” Clary disagreed desperately. She looked to Simon again. “We are not here to fight, I promise. We just want to talk. Hear us out. Please.”

For a moment, all Simon could do was sit on the marble floor and watch his worlds crash and implode, his past and present selves stare each other down. He thought he was ready for this. He thought he could handle the collusion. But here he was, paralyzed in No Man’s land, debris and wreckage falling all around. Clary’s green eyes aiming for his heart, Felix’s azure magic readying their retaliation.

And then, mercifully, reinforcement came in the form of Leilani’s outstretched hand. Simon took and allowed her to help him stand.

“She tells the truth,” Leilani said softly. “She does not come seeking quarrel. I think you know what she hopes for. Whether you decide to give it to her or not, know we won’t judge you. We’ll support whatever choice you make.”

She was right. Simon did know. He read the question—the plea—in Clary’s stare easily. 

“Let’s go outside,” he said. But as he spoke, he did not know what his choice would be. Like Joshua had quoted, forgiveness was an attribute of the strong.

And Simon was not certain of his own strength.


	21. Part II, Chapter 11: Time of Reckoning

“How did you find me?” Simon demanded. His question was as cool as the autumn morning air, not quite cold enough for frost but frigid enough to warn that winter was not far off. The surrounding roses had survived the night, but that was probably due to Leilani’s caretaking, and they bowed their peach colored crowns as she drifted about a yard away. She and Kosuke, walking side by side, kept their distance from Simon, Clary, Izzy, and Jace, politely permitting them privacy for a conversation none of them were particularly anxious to have. But here they were, in the middle of a rose garden, sticking their hands straight into the briar of thorns that was the past.

“We tracked you with this,” Clary answered as she held out a worn guitar pick. Simon recognized instantly as one of his old favorites and chuckled to himself. He hadn’t once considered that they might try to track him, not when, after all this time, no one had ever attempted to find him. But, then again, they almost certainly had taken him for dead—just as he had wanted them to.

“I don’t play anymore,” he said off-handedly. “I never got around to getting a new guitar. Not sure what I’d play if I did. All my old songs—it’s like someone else wrote them.”

“…How are you doing that?” Izzy asked abruptly. She waved a hand at the bright, cloudless sky. Simon shrugged.

“Not sure,” he replied flatly. “I have been able to do it since that day.” “That day” needed no clarification. They all knew he meant that dawn on the riverfront.

“How long have you been here?” Clary asked thickly. She had her arms crossed tightly against her chest, her long fingers grasping her biceps in a vice grip.

“Since that day. Leilani found me and invited me for brunch. And I guess I never left.”

“So, all this time, you’ve been here?” Jace snapped. “At this boardinghouse for rare and endangered downworlders? And you never thought to call or send a note? You only live twenty minutes from the Institute! How hard would it have to drop some kind of clue that you were alive? Do have any kind how many nights Clary cried herself to sleep think you were dead?”

“Jace,” Clary started. “Don’t—"

“I _am_ dead,” Simon interrupted. “That’s precisely why I didn’t drop a hint or note. You refuse to accept that.”

“Simon, please,” Clary begged. “I didn’t want to lose you—”

“—but what about what _I_ wanted!” he cried. “When you decided to rip me out of my grave, did you once stop and think about how I would feel to exist as a bloodsucking corpse? Or consider how I would handle watching everyone I care about age and die while I stay nineteen forever? It was never about me. It was about _you_ and what _you_ wanted.”

Tears sprung to Clary’s eyes, turning spring green wet and glossy, and there was a time when the sight would have been enough to crack Simon’s stony anger. Yet, now, all Simon could feel was the ice that had replaced the blood in his veins.

“Simon,” she trembled. “Simon, I…” Her voice collided with a sob and shattered. Jace took a protective step in front of her.

“What is that you want her to say?” he demanded. “What are the magic words that you are waiting to hear before you stop punishing her?”

“What do I want?” Simon repeated slowly. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t words! If you came here thinking that you’d get your way by going through the motions of an apology, then you wasted a trip!” Wiping furiously at her eyes, Clary pushed Jace back and started toward Simon, but he automatically took a step back. His rage was a hurricane, a destructive howl roaring in his ears.

“Even now,” he laughed cruelly, “you won’t say ‘sorry.’ Because you’re not. You’re not sorry. You’re too convinced that you were right and that I, in the end, should be grateful to still be here—to be with you. You won’t consider the possibility that I would’ve been better off dying as human than living as little more than a beast. But if that was not enough, you expect me to be the Simon that you knew. I can’t change even though you changed me. You didn’t love enough to let me go, and you still don’t.”

He’s crying too, Simon realized suddenly. Streams of red were painting his cheeks in ghastly rouge and then dripping off the sides of his jaw to the garden grass below. He lowered his eyelids, doing his best to blink away the bloody flood, and when he raised them again, Leilani was there, pressing white roses to his cold skin. With their pristine petals, she cleaned his cheeks until the red gone, absorbed into the blooms. Once she was finished, she let the crumpled, stained pieces be swept away in the morning wind.

“Perhaps, for now,” she murmured over her shoulder to the shadowhunters, “we should focus on the other reason you came.”

“Yes,” Izzy agreed quickly, her dark eyes flitting between a sullen Clary and a simmering Jace. “Last night, you said Magnus was safe and that you would save Alec. That means you know where they both are.”

“Magnus is here,” Leilani confirmed. She nodded at the house. “In one of the interior bedrooms. He is safe, I promise. Eshana, as you know, is very adept at stopping intruders.”

“…Can we see him?” Clary sniffled. “It’s been over two weeks since he went missing, and we’ve all been so worried.”

“You may see him if you wish, but know he is unconscious and will remain so until we rescue his _conpar_ and bring him here.”

“Why is he unconscious? And what the hell is a _conpar_?” Jace interrupted frustratedly.

“She is referring to Alec,” Simon said with a spoonful of venom. “ _Conpar_ means soulmate in her people’s language. The trappers sold Magnus to the Circle, and they tried to perform some kind of a ritual on him, but they botched it because they didn’t have something valuable of Alec’s to do it right, and he ended up in a coma. The only way to wake him up is to complete the ritual. That’s why we came to the Institute—we were trying to get Alec’s bow and arrows so Leilani could finish it.”

“Why didn’t you just come to us directly?” Jace pressed. “Did you want to avoid us that much?” _Yes_! Simon wanted to scream, but Leilani answered first.  


“Alec was being watched,” she explained, “by trappers and almost certainly the Circle. We did not want to alert them to Magnus’ whereabouts, but…we were betrayed.”

“By who?” Izzy asked. Leilani’s amber glinted amethyst as she looked out over the swaying roses. Was it just Simon’s imagination, or did their thorns grow a hair longer?

“My brother,” she replied finally. “He told the trappers, the Fenslage Company, about the importance of completing the ritual and that Alec is essential to that ritual.”

“That’s why they burned Alec’s belongings and then kidnapped him,” Izzy deduced solemnly. “They’re trying to force you to hand Magnus over.”

“Why would your brother do that?” Clary cut in. “Why would he help these trappers, people who enslave downworlders and sell them like cattle? If he’s your brother, then he’s a downworlder too, right? Why would he be in league with people hate the very essence of who he is?”

“You are wrong,” Leilani sighed. “Downworlders are those of demon blood, and that is something that neither my brother nor I possess.”

“Of course not,” Jace sneered. “You’re all angel blood. How else could you activate a rune with just a wave of your hand?” 

“Not all,” Leilani said smoothly. “I am no angel nor pretend to be.” Simon whipped his head sharply to stare at her placid expression, a stunning portrait of resigned. She had revealed nothing that Simon did not already implicitly know or, at the very least, couldn’t have guessed. But at O’Keefe Place, shedding one’s skin was not something they did before strangers. That was the whole point of its existence—to allow them to be as they chose to be. To escape a world that they had try to make them into something else.

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Leilani,” Simon told her lowly.

“Yes, she does!” Jace barked. “ _My_ friend is unconscious in her house because of a ritual only _she_ seems to know how to do right, while _my_ parabatai is missing because of _her_ brother. So, yeah, she has to explain herself, and she can start by answering Izzy’s question.” His furious, blue and gold glare shot to Leilani. “Why is your brother helping the trappers?” Simon flashed his fangs.

“Back off—”

“It’s all right, Simon,” Leilani murmured in a gentle interruption. She gifted him with a lovely, apologetic smile. “I thought I could avoid burdening you with a truth that you weren’t meant know. It’s a truth that my ancestors erased from this world for a reason, and those outside my people who learn it always end up wishing for ignorance in the end. It is a curse, this knowledge I must share. It is like a beacon, attracting my kind into your life, and, well, in your myths, though they contain the wrong names and muddle the details, you remember so very clearly how unkind we can be.”

“The favor of your people is fleeting,” Clary recalled. “That’s what the demon last night said. He said…he said you are descended from gods.”

“Aetos was once a great guardian,” Leilani corrected. “In a time long lost, he served a magnificent clan and meted out justice at their command. He held onto memories that the rest of your world was made to forget and spent a millennium chasing a purpose that had become obsolete. What you saw you last night was a crude ghost born out of a cruel abandonment. It does not excuse the wrongs he committed, but he was a scion of hurt.”

“Don’t dodge the question!” Jace snapped. “Why is your brother allied with the enemy?”

Calmly, Leilani leveled gaze with Jace’s piercing heterochromatic glare.

“Because,” she said, “my brother’s _conpar_ is the heir of the Fenslage Company, Keren Fenslage.” If Simon’s heart still functioned, it surely would have arrested.

“Wait, the Frigid Flame is your brother’s soulmate?” he cried.

“The Frigid Flame?” Izzy echoed, knitting her eyebrows together.

“They say she is as ferocious and indiscriminatory as an avalanche,” he explained, “so cold she burns.” They said other things too. That she had all of her father’s cunning and none of her elder brother’s hot blood. That she could slice off a fey’s wing and eat her next meal with her fingers still slick with the unfortunate soul’s green blood. Simon recalled her hard, haunting cerulean eyes in the low glow of ballroom light. How she so effortlessly maneuvered through a field of bodies. 

So cold she burns indeed.

“She sounds like quite the prize,” Jace jeered. “Why would your brother pick someone like that—”

“My people do not choose,” Leilani answered, her tone mild despite having cut Jace off, “not when it comes to _conpars_. We are destined for them, our hearts theirs before we ever breathe, and when we meet them, there is no singular thing in any world that will ever take precedence over them. There are no rules we won’t break for their sake…no person we won’t betray…”

“…Where…where is your _conpar_?” Kosuke chimed tentatively. His dark eyes flitted toward Simon in a lightening fast glance. If Leilani saw, her golden face didn’t show it. Instead, she offered a forlorn grin.

“She is gone. She has been gone for over two centuries—except for ten pieces. Ten tears. One of which is now inside Magnus. It is a part of him—she is a part of him. So the devotion I gave to her, I will now give to him. Please try to understand, shadowhunters, that whatever side my brother chooses, it won’t sway me. He has chosen his _conpar_ , and I will choose what remains of mine.” Simon instantly remembered that he has heard this pledge before, only one day prior.

_And woe to any soul who would abuse what is left of my love._

Now, as then, Leilani’s amber eyes take on an amethyst sheen, that deep, brilliant unnamable purple. Clary, Jace, and Izzy all take a startled step back, their hands instinctively reaching their weapon holsters but hesitant to draw. How do you react to something so beautifully unsettling? That gorgeous, ethereally luminous warning?

Kosuke, apparently, was unhampered by apprehension. He started to reach for her, bravely extending a hand into the twist of thorns to reach the rose. Simon beat him to the bloom, using his unnatural speed to sweep her hand into his. Lightly, he squeezed it, and the violet softened to a gentler lilac.

“Come,” she sighed. “I will tell the rest after breakfast so that everyone can hear.”

“We already ate,” Jace replied childishly. “I told Simon that already.”

“And I told you,” Simon said with equal petulance. “You don’t really have a choice. If you didn’t want to before force fed, then you should have waited to, like, mid-afternoon to break in. Past way lunch but well before dinner. At O’Keefe Place, mealtimes are a time of reckoning.” He grinned, his fangs fully unsheathed. “Better come with an empty stomach, a thick skin, and ready to give as good as you get.”

The shadowhunter was restrained in a strange combination of chains and comfort. Heavily sedated and blindfolded, he had been made to kneel on a pillow of crushed red velvet, while his wrists had been secured tightly behind his back in silk lined manacles. It was comical honestly, Keahi inwardly sneered, the effort made to make the clear captive comfortable.

“You said he was important to this…ritual,” Keren muttered, as if reading his thoughts. “Magnus Bane is worth a fortune, which makes him worth a fortune. Number one rule of business: don’t damage the goods.”

“But you don’t traffic in shadowhunters,” Keahi murmured, unable to keep the slight snarl of disgust out of his tone. Keren’s cerulean eyes crinkled at their corners with antagonistic amusement.

“They’re untamable mongrels,” she replied. “They have that in common with warlocks—half-breeds far more trouble than they’re worth.”

“And yet your family is now putting everything on the line for one warlock and one shadowhunter.”

“That wasn’t exactly my call,” Keren clucked, settling her hands on her hips. “And my father wasn’t exactly eager to accept the commission, but Mr. Morgan offered an ungodly amount of money, and, well, if my father enjoys anything, it’s taking ungodly amounts of money for godly purposes.” A deep, bellowing laugh burst up out of Keahi’s throat.

“You think you’re doing God’s work?” he managed through the peels of laughter. “I will never understand the mortal mind and human blooded. You are so quick to deem anything different from you as lesser—ungodly—but the truth is you are all counted in heaven’s number. Humans, Downworlders, shadowhunters—as far as heaven is concerned, you are all the same at your core. Goodness, all the time you waste supposing yourselves _so_ superior.” Keren’s cold smile suddenly collapsed, and she put on a contemplative pout instead.

“Your sister said something similar the other night,” she recollected stiffly. “She said there would be a price to pay. What makes you two think you know heaven so well?”

Keahi’s subsequent semper simmered and burned like a lava oozing its way down the sides of a volcano, and steam wavered to life as he slid closer to her.

“For one,” he purred, “we come from a place much, much closer to heaven than here. We know the cries and songs of angels as intimately as lullabies. Can you say the same?”

Cerulean drilled craters into his irises of gold flecked bister, trying to pierce the heart of him. She didn’t believe him, he knew. She didn’t want to believe him, because if she did, everything else she had ever believed about her family and her purpose and herself would be upended. That evangelic conviction in the Fenslage name reduced to cinder and ash. But Keahi would not give her the luxury of disbelief. Why he should spar her the severing ties or the loss of everything that had ever mattered when she had refused him that kindness?

He could feel his sister slipping away, their bond crisply, resolutely snapping like a dead twig in the grip of winter. When he saw again her, she would be on the other side of the battlefield. 

No, he would not love as she had, alone. One-sided. He would be compensated for his sacrifice. He would make sure of it.

“Would you like to know what the color of heaven is?” he whispered. He was close enough to enough for the heat of his breath to nip Keren’s lips. She curled them in distaste and then parted them, mostly likely to rebuke him. Briefly, he imagined it was instead to kiss him.

“Apologies if I am interrupting.” 

There was no apology in Ephraim’s tone, though, as he entered to the roomy cell. He openly glared at Keahi, his scar wrinkling unbecomingly across the stretch of his broad face. At least the blockhead was consistent in his suspicion, Keahi mused. Ephraim had treated him with nothing less than vehement misgivings from the moment Keren had—reluctantly—brought Keahi into the fold, and he had chaffed under the orders of one who do not carry Fenslage name. One who was not one of them. One who was not even human. And one whose loyalty laid so plainly with his sister—with his rival.

“You’re not an interrupting a thing,” Keren said, cerulean digging a little deeper into Keahi before flicking to her brother. “What is it? Is she here?” Keahi pretended not to hear the slight trill of intrigue that punctuated “she.” She. Leilani.

“No, not yet,” Ephraim replied with a shake of the head. “But Mr. Morgan is. He would like to see the angel halfling.” Keren shrugged.

“Fine. I see no reason why not. It does belong to him, after all, since as it and the warlock are a pair.”

“Oh, and Father would like a word,” Ephraim added sneeringly. “Something about last minute preparation for when she arrives. He asks that you leave your…dog behind.” Nonpulsed, Keahi chuckled. Ah, that badly concealed thirst for savagery. That itch to skin and tan hides of “monsters.” For that, Ephraim Fenslage would pay a very steep price. Keahi needed not bother taking offense.

“Stay here,” Keren, walking away, told him. “And don’t bite Mr. Morgan.” 

“As you wish,” Keahi replied, bowing playfully. Snorting, she followed her brother out of the cell, allowing a stranger to immediately fill the space she had vacated. Dressed in an all black suit that covered every inch of skin from his neck down, the newcomer was on the shorter side of average height, the crest of his shaven head barely level with Keahi’s chin. Some might have considered him handsome, but to Keahi, he was perfectly bland and unremarkable in every way—save for the swirling, jet black tattoos the man must have thought well hidden under his suit and glamour. But Keahi easily saw through the deception, just as he saw through all deception.

“Mr. _Morgan_ , was it?” he hummed. It took a beat from the stranger to look up, his attention fixed on the bound shadowhunter kneeling before them, but when he did, he jolted back like a cat skittering sideways away from a sudden boom.

“Oh,” Keahi said, understanding dawning brightly. “You see me, as I see you. Good, then we don’t need to bother with pretense. Let’s speak frankly, Mr. Morgan..stern.”

Valentine Morgenstern took a deep, shuddering breath before composing himself.

“You know me?” he asked calmly as he adjusted his tie.

“Your infamy proceeds you,” Keahi replied, “even in my circle. But you were aware of that already, I am sure, seeing as you can see. You’ve encountered my kind before, and they lifted the veil off your eyes. I hope you know that was not a favor they were doing you. Giving true sight—it’s the cruelest thing we can do. I wondered who you offended and how.”

“All I did was call their names,” Valentine answered. “That is no crime.”

“On the contrary, that is the greatest crime. One your kind has committed before at great expense. No wonder you were ‘gifted’ with the true sight. They wanted you to see just who you had dared to summon. They wanted you to see exactly where you stood in the grand design. Are you surprised to see that is not at the top as you have long supposed? It must have been quite the blow. Yes, what a terrible gift you have been given. Bad things are known to happen to angels when their pride is wounded.”

“Bad things? No calamity has befallen me since learning the truth,” Valentine argued. “No, it has opened my eyes and showed me where Nephilim’s destiny lies and the path to get there.”

“Oh, Nephilim,” Keahi tutted, smiling broadly. “Your arrogance never fails to astound. No calamity has befallen you? Look around, Morgenstern. One of your kind in chains at the hands of mundanes. Your plans and hopes hinging on a warlock who is hours away from a deep, long, unshakeable sleep and therefore hours away from being useless to you. And, we mustn’t forget, my sister’s wrath hanging over your head. No calamity? Just wait. If you don’t see it now, you’ll see it soon enough.”

Valentine’s lips quirked like a darting flash of lightening, a faint crack in his bravado.

“Your sister?” he echoed. “Why would her wrath be aimed at me?”

“It is her tears that you are abusing,” Keahi said, delighting viciously in the revelation despite his nonchalant delivery. “You conned them out of Aaron Ito, and even if he was a pitiful excuse of a man, he was still a descendant of my sister’s beloved, for whom she shed those tears. You had no right to ask for them. To buy them. But then you had audacity to experiment with them, staining them, spilling the blood of countless souls in your pursuit, trying to perform a ritual you do not understand, let alone know how to properly perform. And the moment that your umpteenth attempt did not result in death, the creation was hers, never yours. That warlock, who is now no longer just a warlock, is hers. Hers and her beloved’s. Still, you persist, trying to lay claim, getting in the way of finishing only what she can finish, endangering that precious, precious creation.”

Flickering, snide shadows began to dance and dart across the cell’s walls as a glow ignited in Keahi’s eyes—an intense, volcanic, burning orange.

“She is going to destroy you.”

Another crack emerged in Valentine’s stone-faced façade as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“I thought you were an ally of the Fenslage. They said you would help fight against…your sister.”

“Ally? That’s a gross exaggeration. The only interest I have in the Fenslage Company is the survival of its heir. What happens to the rest of them is none of my concern. As for when my sister arrives, the most I can do is dampen her powers, but she will in turn dampen mine. This will come down to a battle between the mundanes and my sister’s collection of Downworlders. And it’s a fine collection. If I had to bet, my money would not be on the mundanes. Not that I gamble—it’s no fun when you can see through every bluff.”

“So, are you saying the Fenslage are bluffing their way through this?” Donning a mockingly contemplative expression, Keahi rested a broad hand on the bound shadowhunter’s head of dark waves. The boy tensed beneath his palm, going as still as a possum playing dead. Valentine too went rigid, his breathing ceasing as quickly as a huffed-out flame.

“This child of Raziel,” Keahi mused, “and his warlock mate, they are worth more than any amount of coin the Fenslage could ever procure. They are more tangible and real than your designs of grandeur. And to my sister, they are a resurrection of her dead heart. They are rejuvenation. They are the spark jolting her back awake. The Fenslage cannot fathom the notion that they cannot win this fight. They think too highly of themselves for that. Even Keren, as cool and rational as she is, doesn’t understand the landslide that is about to descend upon this family.”

Glancing again at Valentine, his burning stare crackled like magma.

“But you do, Morgenstern,” he went on. “You can see now. You’ve seen.”

“You’re telling me to run,” Valentine, at last, realized. “You’re telling me to sit out this fight out. Well, Nephilim don’t run. We are not cowards!”

“Fine, then,” Keahi replied, retracting his hand from the captive’s locks. “It makes no difference to me if you prefer bear the same fate that awaits the Fenslage. By all means, die ‘nobly’ today. As I said, I am only concerned with Keren’s welfare, so, after tonight, she is the only one guaranteed to see tomorrow. When the dust settles, she could use allies, and I merely thought you’d like to be one of them. Yet, contrary to your amusing beliefs, but you’re not special, Morgenstern. I can find her allies elsewhere if you truly prefer die tonight.”

“And why would I want to ally myself with a girl barely old enough to be called a woman?” Valentine chuckled bitterly. “Because she has a talent for roping in a Downworlders? Because you clearly have amorous intentions toward her? How does any of that make a mundane worthy of partnership with me?”

“As a high and mighty Nephilim with the true sight, you ought to know she’s no mundane,” answered Keahi. Leisurely, he began to saunter to Valentine, his steps slow and menacing. “Or did you not bother to look properly? And even if she was just a mundane, the fact that I stand behind her should be more than enough to convince you of her worth.”

Raising his hand, he cupped the air and willed it to burn, and it obeyed, a blood red flame sizzling thirstily to life between his fingers.

“I will burn what stands in the way of her destiny to ash,” he swore. “My flames—they are nothing like what you know of here on this mortal plane. The land they scorch never know life again. The souls they consume never know heaven or hell or the in-between. They take all, and they take absolutely.” 

He raised his hand to the level of his eyes, and it was impossible to tell where the firelight ended and the magmatic heat of his stare began.

“Think carefully, oh righteous Nephilim,” he sneered, his smile ghoulishly contoured in the wavering glow. “How do you really want to die? Tonight, so far from where you think you deserve to be? Or tomorrow, or someday after that, even just little bit closer to that mountaintop?”

Valentine did not answer him, but the angel half-blood did not need to. Keahi had walked among mortals long enough to know the power of their own vanity, and as Valentine backed out of the fierce, crackling blaze of his stare and out of the cell, he read the Nephilim’s decision plainly on his face.

“You must think me fickle,” Keahi said once the door had groaned closed. Slipping his hands into his dark jeans’ pockets, he turned toward the kneeling boy, who cocked his ear a hair of a degree at the rumbling words. Inwardly, Keahi snickered.

_Ah, as I thought, you are not as out of it as you’re letting everyone think you are. That cocktail might strong enough to put a Fenslage down for the count—but not quite strong enough to take down one of Raziel’s spawn._

“Maybe you think I’m trying to play both sides,” he went on. “But you’d be wrong. Thing is, I’m actually quite single-minded, and I find this whole ordeal quite unnecessary. As I told Morgenstern, I know how this will end. If I had it my way, you’d still be at the Institute, perhaps already reunited with your warlock. But Keren…she is the type of soul that must see to believe, so my foresight is not enough. She needs to see it play out for herself. So I am indulging her. What does it matter anyway? The ending will not change. Besides, Keren will not accept her destiny until the false bonds that tie her to this world are undone, and I cannot be the one to cut them, for she would detest me for it. But my dear sister has no need of her love and will cut what she must to achieve what she wants. And what she wants is what you want, Alec Lightwood.”

From his right pocket, Keahi pulled out a bloom, its swirling petals an apple red at their edges, a gentle pink at their middle, and a pearl white at the center of their meeting. 

“My fire destroyed the demonic ice when I set flame to your room,” he, still astonished, noted, “but the Vow Rose itself is pristine. So stringent is my sister’s will to reunite you and your mate that my flames could not even touch it.”

It was right and natural that his fire weakened in the presence of one of her green things. But, in turn, it was right and natural for her green for fade and wither in the presence of his flames. They were each other’s balance and negation. One could not outdo or overpower the other.

Until now. Until this Vow Rose unscathed by the inferno. 

Crouching down on his haunches, Keahi placed the bloom in the shadowhunter’s bound hands. The boy’s long fingers tensed and then curled to cup the flower with the utmost tenderness.

“M..Magnus,” he sighed almost inaudibly, his breath hitching on the warlock’s name.

“Remember to tell my sister of this kindness, shadowhunter, when she comes for you,” Keahi demanded as he stood. “Tell her so she knows that I’m owed a boon in return.”

Because, gazing again at that thriving flower cradled in the Nephilim’s palms, Keahi sensed he may need it. That, in the battle to come, he and his sister, for the first time since their birth, would stand face to face on uneven ground.


	22. Part II, Chapter 12: Children of Eden

After a breakfast consisting of no less than three rounds of servings, Mr. O’keefe suggested that his tenants and their so-called “guests” adjourn to the ballroom located on the mansion’s fourth floor. A marble marvel boasting floor to ceiling windows overlooking the entire estate, it was more than spacious enough to hold them all and leave a generous buffer between Downworlder and Nephilim.

“By the angel, my stomach,” Izzy moaned, slouching against a marble column as soon they arrived. “So. Many. Waffles.” Passing by her, Samir snorted.

“Oh, please. Three stacks of pancakes is nothing. Talk to me after eating your body weight in chicken soup.”

“Or trout,” added Noelle.

“Or linguine,” chimed in Danny.

“Eggs,” drawled Sage.

“O negative,” said Simon with a shudder. All eyes swung to him, and, rubbing the back of his head, he chuckled hesitantly. “What? It might be the universal donor, but it’s bland as dirt.”

“He’s not wrong,” Brielle murmured as she examined her nails. “O neg is like celery—good for you but completely devoid of taste and joy. Now AB, that’s the equivalent of moist chocolate cake—positively scrumptious.” Smoothly, her baby blues slid to Jace, and she smiled widely. “AB is your blood type, isn’t it, pretty boy? I could smell it the moment you broke in.”

“Oh, I’m positively delicious,” Jace quipped back. “But too bad for you, you won’t ever get a taste.”

“That’s cute,” Brielle snickered. “You fancy yourself just. Honorable. But the best blood comes from spoiled, rotten honor. And you shadowhunters, well, your blood always carries a foul aftertaste, like milk a day past its expiration date—not all the gone but getting there.”

“Oh, and you eaten a lot of us?” Izzy demanded, stomachache forgotten. 

“I don’t count,” Brielle replied, “but I don’t ever forget a meal either, and if you really want me to, I’ll recount every one that contained angel flesh before your Silent Brothers and High Inquisitor when this all over. Just know, though, that those shadowhunters will no longer just be dead in the eyes of the Clave. They’ll be worse than dead. They’ll be damned. You will be able to bear it, shadowhunter? Responsibility for destruction of their memory, I mean?”

“What are you talking ab—”

“Izzy,” Jace interrupted softly as he pulled her back by the elbow. “You heard her earlier, right? The people deer women eat...they deserve it. And if a shadowhunter is eaten by one, then they’re cast out even in death. They can’t be buried on Clave land, let alone in the City of Bones. They’re stripped from their family trees and erased from any and every record.”

“Not so much a punishment for the dead,” Brielle chimed in. “It’s more so to protect the shadowhunter delusion of angelic flawlessness.”

“That’s enough, Brielle,” Simon said. 

“Is it? I feel like I could go on. And on. …And on.” But she didn’t, because Leilani had entered the ballroom and was making her way to the windows, everyone stepping with deference out of her path. In the ample autumn morning light, she glowed gold, her champagne skin and the begonia auburn of her gown soaking in the sun. And when she turned to face them, her irises were two pure pools of amber, beckons of light that shone over them with breathtaking solemnity.

“…I would not blame you,” she said, “if you have changed your minds and do not wish to hear this. Once you hear, you cannot unhear it. It is not a secret that you are meant to know. It is not a tale I’m meant to tell. I won’t be punished for telling, but you’ll be cursed for knowing.”

It’s a warning she has told Simon before when he demanded the keys to her past. It was as if a bridge stood between him and her, and she feared the toll to join her on the other side would be too much for him to pay. Maybe he should be afraid too. Maybe he should walk away. Maybe…but he said instead,

“I’m staying right here.” Leilani’s lips offered up a crescent smile, its brightness diminutive compared to a full moon grin, before she surveyed the room on last time. No one moved or uttered a word, their consent given in patient silence. 

“Very well,” Leilani sighed. She spread her arms wide, like she was about to call down a greater power, and her amber irises ignited, beaming and burning like twin comets yearning to soar. A burst of floral creation poured from her palms—carnations, chrysanthemums, jonquils, lilies, lotuses, roses, orange blossoms, olive leaves, hyacinths, columbine, hyssops, mallow—all this and more yet pouring forth.

And then she began.

“My people were on born steppes of heaven when the brightest of the angels fell.” 

The myriad of flowers swirled into a mural of a genesis scene: lily and sunflower-winged angels bearing sword and spear clashing, battling, the most beautiful and shining of them suddenly staggering, a blade of coltsfoot piercing its daisy breast, and then rapidly descending. He broke apart magnificently into a grand scattering of crimson marigold petals.

“The last of the Fallen’s uncorrupted seraph blood blessed and soiled every element in Paradise, and so came my ancestors, the progenitors of my people, the Great Five Pillars of the Garden.” The blooms above divided themselves by color—yellow, blue, green, red, and white—and then shifted to form pairs of dueling silhouettes, each couple containing a figure of lighter shades and one of darker hues. Embracing their other half, the silhouettes tilted their heads back to gaze up, tears of laurel and Adonis spilling over their cheeks.

“They opened their eyes and saw heaven splitting open and angels falling, their wings of fire rotting to dust. They saw and wept, my ancestors. They saw the Beginning and the Fall and so would see all as it truly is. The wickedness of Lilith—” A feminine shadow of apocynum appeared at the center of the pentagon that was created by the five Pillars, whose tears continued to stream as the woman morphed into something distinctively inhuman and vaguely monstrous. “—and the deception of Lucifer.”

Adder’s tongue ferns slithered together into a green-eyed serpent that hissed and twisted ‘round an anemone-apple. The lighter, smaller silhouette of the emerald couple stepped away from her partner and outstretched a hand of peony leaves.

“Terra of the Third Pillar, sower of seeds, tried to warn Adam and Eve, to keep them from making the great mistake. But they scorned her, called her a soulless thing, unintended and unwanted. Her conpar, Casso, shaker of earth, in his fury proclaimed that the Pillars would cease their crying and shut their eyes to the strife of man. It was not their concern, he declared when Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise. What happened on the mortal plane would not be of consequence to the Natura, the Children of Eden. So the Pillars wiped away their tears and shut their eyes, save for Terra, who was not ready to give up on humans.”

Seven of the eight silhouettes shucked off their tears, laurel reeds and Adonis petals quickly browning and disintegrating as they fell away, but Terra’s tears remained, her eyes vibrantly gold compass flowers.

“The centuries passed, the Pillars were fruitful and multiplied, their children always born in pairs as they were, creation and destruction eternally twins. Their children grew, and so their curiosity of the mortal world. They drifted from their birthplace to explore the lands of humans, casual witnesses to man’s early history. Humans knew them for what there were and sometimes called their names to beg for help and intercession—a dangerous gamble, for the young Natura were restless and extreme in their emotions. They were often punitive and rarely caring for those who weren’t kin or their _conpar_ , who made their fractured selves whole. Sometimes, they found their _conpars_ among humans and Downworlders and took them away to Eden, as they thought their right and destiny.”

The images painted in petals shifted swiftly from one to the next, lasting just long enough to be recognized as snippets of myth: Zeus sweeping down to claim Ganymede, Hylas following into the watery arms of a nymph, King Shantanu spying Ganga on the riverbank, Skade forsaking her husband for Odin, Chang’e led into the heavens and away from Hou Yi, Gameunjang-aegi bestowing luck on a youth of humble birth, Hades spiriting away Persephone in a grand chariot of darkness. 

“This is how it was for a millennium. But then came the Nephilim.”

Crown Imperials clustered to form a man in armor, a sword poised and foreboding over his head. Jonathan Shadowhunter, first of the Nephilim.

“The Children of Raziel did not know what to make of us Natura, neither human nor of demon descent, possessing more angel blood than them but not seraphs, souls fractured and perhaps of no real consequences. In the end, the shadowhunters scorned us, lumping us together with demons as unwanted invaders. When a young natura, Maetitia, sought to lay claim to her human _conpar_ , Olenus, shadowhunters interfered, an act of arrogance that proved unforgivable.”

A young man of mourning bride fell upon the crown imperial blade, and as the purple petals broke apart, a girl of furze blazed to life in his place, her mouth wrenched wide in agony, hair or flames or both streaming wildly around her.

“Maetitia vowed to raze Alicante and the whole of the shadowhunter race to ash. She had the power and the wrath to fulfill that promise, and the shadowhunters in desperation forced a warlock of great renown to summon down a Pillar.”

The warlock appeared as a lithe woman of harebell, her mark a prominent horn of freesia jutting out of her forehead, her magic a swirl of lilies that corralled a flurry of green into two tall, imposing silohuettes, the smaller one weeping laurel and Adonis from her compass flowers.

“Casso was enraged at the Nephilim’s impertinence and was content to let Maetitia enact her vengeance, but Terra interceded and begged for mercy, for Nephilim had a divine commission. Casso relented but demanded that, in exchange for sparing them, that shadowhunters replace what they had stolen. That they offer someone up as Maetitia’s _conpar_. And the shadowhunters did—but not one of their own, as Casso intended.”

The warlock girl of harebell and freesia collapsed to her knees, her hands clutching her chest, as furze flames engulfed her.

“It was supreme selfishness, the shadowhunters foisting their penance upon innocent Talia Rose, and Terra at last wiped away her tears, because she wanted to see no more of pain and sin.”

Discarding her laurel and Adonis tears, Terra plucked out her compass flowers eyes and held them out on her peony leaf palm to the wind, which eagerly snatched them and flung them high and out of sight.

“When Terra closed her eyes, the memory of the Children of Eden faded away from the minds of mortal plane, their names lost and corrupted in myth. The Natura still come to wander and explore but are never seen as they truly are. They pass through this world unmoved by its suffering and unbothered by the demonic forces lurking in the dark, for they do not intend to linger long. They stay just long enough to prove to themselves that humans—and Nephilim—have not changed.”

The floral mural melded into a kaleidoscope sky, blooms of every shade swirling in voluptuous, aromatic cumulonimbi. 

“That is the truth your world forgot. That is the trespass you have not repented for. That is the toll my people have exacted. That is only the tip of the mountain. There is still so much more to tell. Yet, for now, this is enough. This is enough to lift the veil. That is enough for you to truly see.”

The sky broke open, and the colors came crashing down in a rainbow torrent.

Simon’s head was spinning faster than a tilt-a-world. One minute, an entire botanical garden was raining down, but in the few seconds he took to blink and shake his vision clear, every last petal vanished, the marble wall as smooth and spotless as it was before Leilani’s voice echoed gently against the cream speckled walls. And Leilani—

Simon’s lifeless lungs ached for breath merely so they could expel it into astonished air. If Leilani was beautiful before, there were no words to describe her now…now that Simon could see the true, unfiltered her.

The transformation in her skin was subtle, creamy coffee lightening to a silky, shining champagne, but the change had taken a far more dramatic turn at her hair, the dark ebony curls evanescing reveal ankle length tendrils of cherry blossoms, their ethereal pink interwoven with blooms of exhilarating scent—gardenias, azaleas, roses, wisteria, lilac, and jasmine. Her eyes, though, her eyes were the most magnificent alteration. Honey gold had eroded, flaking off like the dead shell of a chrysalis, and out from the cocoon had come pupil-less, solid violet. No, deeper than that. Deeper, and more brilliant.

And more brilliant yet as she rose up, that unnamable deeper than violet glowing more gloriously than the Aurora Borealis. Simon had to squint to keep his eyes focused, and he, unsure of what he was witnessing, gawked in disbelief as six wings spread and arched behind her, their feathers not feathers but thousands upon thousands of frilled lilies-of-the valley. Glistening with diamond dew droplets, the heavenly white reflected the ethereal purple, amplifying its luminosity until the whole of the ballroom was made of pure, divine light.

Simon nearly hit his knees. Kosuke actually dropped to his as his jaw fell and quivered, trembling out an awestruck adoration.

“ _Ā watashi no megami.”_


	23. Part II, Chapter 13: Inheritor of the Kingdom

In her father’s study, right above an austere fireplace and against dark chimney stones, hung a portrait of Keren’s mother. She had always been told that she was the photograph’s spitting image, but Keren couldn’t see any inch of herself in Mara Fenslage. Guileless eyes of soft, baby boy blue, she was of a fragile stock, small and thin framed, almost girl instead of grown woman. The morning blue lace contraption of a dress didn’t do her any favors in that respect and instead made her like a Victorian doll, prettily sad and lonesome, waiting for someone to take her down from the shelf yet simultaneously terrified that someone would break her in the process.

Was it really any wonder, then, that she had died on the green side of thirty, thighs wet with afterbirth, Keren’s newborn wails her requiem?

Keren supposed she did love Mara in the way most children loved their mothers—out of instinctual gratitude—but disgust was there too. Disgust for Mara’s weakness, which was evident not just in photos, but in her history and the stories passed down to Keren from her kinsmen. She hadn’t been born into a trapping clan but instead was the daughter a broker, a slick middleman, who had connected trappers to rich, distaining clientele, and Keren got the drift that she had been sheltered and groomed for some grandeur match. How Jedidiah had gotten her to come down from her ivory tower wasn’t quite known, but the way Aunt Judith would sigh whenever recalling her wispy sister-in-law told Keren that Mara had probably regretted it in the end and had gone to God never having loved her husband as much as he had loved her.

As much as he still loved her, that love casting a long, long shadow when his eyes fell upon his daughter. And now, as he was looking at Keren and clearly seeking a piece of his dearly departed wife, Keren’s disgust grew a little more, like an insidious fungus, along with, admittedly, fear. Fear that he would see that Mara had passed something horrifying down to her daughter. That somewhere in that maternal branch of the family tree was a gene coded with the inability to lie but also a great talent for deception. And with a cold, unforgiving fire. Because if Jedidiah knew, that love with a long shadow would disappear completely in the light of his devasted fury.

“Ah, Keren, dear,” he murmured, slipping off his reading glass. “There are you.” He closed the King James Bible that was nestled in his lap and then moved it to a low side table next to his chair. “You may leave us, Ephraim.”

Behind her, Ephraim tried and failed to suppress a sputter.

“’You may leave us?’” he snarled. “What I am? The help?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Keren can’t help but dig. “That would require you to possess diligence and work ethic.”

“You know I’m out there bustin’ my ass just like everyone else!” Ephraim barked. “God, do you have to be such a vicious bi—”

“Finish that sentence, boy,” their father cut in smoothly, “you’ll find out that you’ll never be too old to be bent over my knee.”

“Why do you always take her side!” Ephraim shouted as he pushed past Keren. His face was pomegranate red, his scar a bright, white hot jagged line. “Didn’t you hear what she said?”

“Yes—a rather astute observation on her part.”

“ _Father_ —”

“Might I remind you, _son_ , how this whole affair began?” Ephraim slammed his jaw shut as if slapped silent. He clenched both his fists until his knuckles turned a bloodless white to match his scar. 

“…You can’t blame me for Ito’s stupidity—”

“Then who do you suggest bear the blame? It wasn’t your sister who fostered the Orpheus Group, now was it?” At once, red seemed to leech from Ephraim’s entire body, his fists abruptly releasing into hapless hands. Keren’s eyes combed casually over her brother’s startled stance.

“Fostered?” she repeated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you going to tell her, or should I?” Jedidiah posed as he leaned into his straight back chair like King Solomon about to pass sentence. “She deserves to know, seeing as she has spent the last couple weeks cleaning up your mess.”

The air grew stale and bitter as Ephraim’s grey-blue eyes searched it for an answer, for words, for any sound really, but came up with nothing. Jedidiah sighed.

“Ito’s little outfit,” he said, “was just that—little. Insignificant. They had no idea what they were doing. No finesse. No direction. Doomed to fold…until your brother here stepped in. Ito flattered his vanity. And his greed. He promised a tidy percentage of the Orpheus Group’s profit if he helped them improve. So help he did, improving them just enough to make them a little less insignificant.”

“You went outside the family?” Keren deduced incredulously. “You showed a competitor the ropes?”

“Ito wasn’t competition then,” Ephraim snapped, his voice found again but rough. Strained. Swallowing, he dared to look at their father. “And it wasn’t just money he offered. He wanted me to be his partner. It was my chance, my one chance, to prove I can be a leader. I was never going to get that here, inside these walls, not when everything inside them belongs to precious little Keren, who can do no wrong. She’s the reason Mother’s dead, but you treat her like she’s God’s gift to mankind—”

“Keren is a gift,” Jedidiah clipped. His words, as always, were soft but not the pleasurable, gentle soft. They were warning soft. The calm before the storm. “She’s your mother’s gift to this family. There was nothing more than your mother wanted than to give this family a true, worthy heir, and she knew before anyone else that she had not achieved that with _you_.”

“You’re lying!” Ephraim hissed. “Mother loved me—”

“Of course she loved you,” their father conceded easily. “She was your mother—an excellent, loving mother. But she wasn’t a fool. Quite the opposite. And she knew the moment you were born that you would bring shame upon this house. I didn’t understand it then. I couldn’t see what she did. But now…now, it is so painfully evident—the disappointment you grew up to be.”

Ephraim’s stance faltered, his knees giving out for a split second, and he stumbled backwards half a step, nearly knocking into Keren. His eyes were wide and, for the first time she could recall, empty of anger. There was something else in there in his stare. Something fractured…something beyond repair.

“Let me perfectly clear,” Jedidiah continued. “It is as you said—everything within these walls is Keren’s. She is the inheritor of this kingdom. That was your mother’s will. That is my will. And if that dissatisfies you, son, then you know very well were the door is.”

In a blink, the rage re-burgeoned in Ephraim’s glare, grey-blue going dark like a horizon overcome by a storm’s approach. He fled, rushing out of the room like a man on fire.

“…Forgive me, father,” Keren said once he was gone, “but was that wise? It is not that not he didn’t know, it’s that as long no one said it aloud, then there was always the illusion of a chance.”

“False hope, daughter, is the most addictive drug there is,” her father answered as he stood. “You know it’s killing you a little bit every day, but the high is too sweet to give up, the withdrawal almost too painful to endure. But it must be endured to move forward. To live.”

“But what does he have now to live for? Now that he knows for sure there is nothing for him here? He is the son and the eldest. Tradition says it all should be his.”

“How many dynasties fell because of that tradition? Because men let incompetent boys succeed them simply because they were the eldest male sired?” Closing the distance between, Jedidiah clasped Keren’s shoulders firmly.

“Do you know why your mother picked the name ‘Keren’ for you?” he asked. She, peering up at her mother’s delicate, girlish face, shook her head. “She thought its meaning was fitting. Kerenhappuch was a daughter of Job, one of three born after his great strife. She and her sisters were all very beautiful and were their father’s reward for never losing faith, and he deemed them all worthy of equal inheritances as their brothers.”

“I know the story, Father,” she replied dismissively. “I also know that ‘Kerenhappuch’ means ‘horn of eye makeup.’ Are you telling that Mother purposely named me after a cosmetic container?”

“No,” he chuckled, seizing her shoulders lightly. “Despite what your aunt says, your mother was not a flighty woman. ‘Keren’ has other meanings—ray of light. Strength. Power. Glorious Dignity. That is why she picked it. You are this family’s glorious dignity. Its ray of light and hope. Your mother knew Ephraim would be my strife and that you would be my pride, and she made sure your name would never let me forget it. Not that I could even if she even hadn’t.”

Her father smiled, a rare, rare sight. Rarer still was the show of affection that followed when Jedidiah lifted his hands to cup her cheeks and leaned to bestow a kiss upon her forehead—acknowledgement and anointment. Keren wouldn’t have minded at all if that moment had lasted all night.

But then the door to the study slammed open, the jarring sound tearing father and daughter apart as they spun around, hands simultaneously reaching for blades strapped to their belts only to hesitate as the intruder, slumped and dragging, struggled to lift his sandy haired head.

“Nephew?” Jedidiah gasped. “Benedict, what is it? What was wrong?” If her father hadn’t said it, Keren wouldn’t have believed it, that the diminished stranger collapsing in the doorway was her cousin. She had shared the cradle with him since birth, saw him nearly every day, but she didn’t recognize him when he, with a final burst of energy, threw his head back and up. His face was shredded, skin ripped clean off in some parts, hanging by thin, stringy threads of tissue in others. Blood obscured any defining that might have remained, war paint he would not live to wash off, but it was indeed his voice, reedy and nasally, that trembled forth from sliced, sagging lips.

“S…she’ss h-here,” he warned. “..A-and…sh-he brought..fr-riends…”


	24. Part II, Chapter 14: Speak of the Devil

Samir went first and right through the front door. He didn’t mind at all and was actually looking forward to a good old-fashioned smack down. Joshua’s appearance had led to a build-up of steam that had nowhere to go until now, a rather unfortunate fact for the dozen or so trappers in front him.

“Whew,” he whistled, hands slipping casually into the pocket of his jeans as he eyed the readied whips and nets in their hands. “You Fenslage sure know how to make a guy feel welcomed.”

“Our customer service is par none,” a sandy haired young man leading the pack sneered nasally. “So I’m afraid we can’t allow a savage _animal_ to run wild in our lobby.” Chuckling, Samir cast his gaze over said lobby, a wide, polished room that had clearly been designed with wealthy clientele in mind. The wallpaper was an expensive emerald green overlaid with a gold leaf pattern of ivy leaves, a nice compliment to the American Revival styled seating, austere and stately looking with its intricately carved backing and cream-colored upholstery. Small marble tables shouldered the couches on either side, each boasting a thick, leather bound book. Samir shuffled over to the nearest one, and lifting the cover and first few pages, he was immediately confronted by a hazy eyed fey with drooping spiderweb fine wings. It was not merely a book. It was a catalogue.

He withdrew his hand, it aching sharply as if he had been bitten.

“I would take offense,” he replied finally, “but that requires me to care about your opinion. Besides, of all the savage creatures running around this place, I should be the least of your concerns.” As if on cue, a small shadow darted across the room, flitting over the trappers’ heads and landing on Samir’s left shoulder as a shifting ball of smoky darkness that evaporated rapidly in thick wafts to reveal a spindly, pixie-like thing. Skin as red as freshly spilled blood and leathery, bat wings to match, she had a wild, tangled inky black mane for hair, two smoldering pits for eyes, and a slice of a vicious smile. She flicked a long, charcoal lizard tongue and began to lick her razor thin talons, three on each hand and each one impossibly longer than her.

“Speak of the devil,” greeted Samir. “Your timing is as impeccable as always, darling.”

“ _That_?” the young trapper, snorting, laughed. “That _insect_ is the ‘savage’ animal we need to worry about? Please. All I need is a fly swatter.”

“Ooh,” Samir sighed. “Tawrich here doesn’t like being compared to a bug. It makes her a little, well, antsy.” He chuckled at his pun, but Tawrich buzzed angrily and smacked a wing against his neck. “What? I thought it was hilarious.”

“This isn’t a comedy club,” the trapper spat, “and we don’t play games. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that you’re an attack dog sent by that strange fey girl. The little bitch is wasting her efforts—and your life.” At once, Tawrich screeched, a wailing torrent rocketing from her jaws, ghoulishly wide and stuffed to the brim with curving fangs. The sheer force of it sent the trappers flying back, a handful colliding against walls, the rest tumbling into furniture. The reedy voiced trapper t-boned one of the little coffee tables, and the catalogue it sported collided condemningly into his forehead.

“Dude, now you’ve done it, Samir said, rubbing his ringing left ear. “See, Tawrich and her sisters don’t like what I don’t like. I don’t like people threatening my life, and I really don’t like scum insulting my friends.”

“S-sisters?” the trapper croaked. He started to roll to his side and propped himself up with a wobbling elbow. “The fly has sisters?”

“Just how painfully do you want to die, man?” Samir tutted. “I’d really lay off the insect metaphors if I were you. But, then again, like my old man always said—fools die the devil’s food.”

“What are you talking abou—”

“You ever wonder where they go,” Samir cut in, “those insidious little wishes we all get? The terrible, awful things we want and crave but can never admit aloud to anyone, not even ourselves? Those desires we push deep, deep down and hope they disappear down there? Well, they don’t disappear.”

Samir felt his eyes go scarlet, his magic hot and wrathful in their sockets. Lazily, he lifted a hand, palm up, and the trapper instantly began to convulse, twisting, writhing violently, his hands scrambling desperately at his chest.

“They stay there,” continued Samir. “They wait. They grow. And if they are strong enough—” Bypassing the frantic clutching of the trapper’s fingers, a ball of ashen smoke ascended out of his chest, rising and dissipating quickly, leaving in its grayish wake a twin to Tawrich, different only in her coloring, a putrid yellow.

“—they take shape,” Samir finished, “and become something that can’t be ignored. The devil on our shoulder—the worst of us that gets the best of us.” Tawrich’s twin tested her talons, flexing and stretching her twig digits, and she then peered at Samir from between her dagger nails. Her eyes were darker than Tawrich’s. Darker than most of her kind. And more pitiless too.

“I think I’ll call you Agas, darling,” Samir decided. “You must be bursting at the seams after being caged in for so long. Go on—have fun. In fact, all of you, go to town.”  
Agas grinned, her sour canary lips splitting maniacally, her darkling eyes sparking with a hint of hellfire. Needing no further encouragement, she squealed starvingly, a low bloodcurdling gurling, which she satisfied by sinking her teeth into the cheek of her chrysalis.

And, as she reared her head back, tearing off fat chunk of flesh, the trapper howling nasally, the horde descended to join the feast. 

“Hold up,” Jace cried, his eyes swelling as they absorbed the carnage Samir’s “pets” had wrought. He thrust out the black lacquered box accusingly. “This thing had demons in it? You had me toting around a box of hungry demons?”

“What did you think it was?” Brielle scoffed. “A music box with a little toy ballerina inside? Besides, what’s the big deal? You’re a shadowhunter, aren’t you? Don’t you deal with bigger, badder demons on your average Tuesday?”

“A little warning would be nice!” Jace snapped back. He shot his golden glower at Simon. “Why does your roommate have a box of demons?”

“Good question,” Noelle tacked on. “Didn’t Joshua steal it?”

“He left it in my room before he pissed off,” Samir answered, joining them. Tawrich and the newly born Agas were hovering above either of his shoulders, both licking clean their blood drenched talons. “He probably realized he couldn’t control them. They answer only to one master.”

“You?” Isabella assumed. “Their maker?”

“I’m their master—but not their maker. I’m simply their extractor. Agas, Tawrich, and their sisters are drujs, manifestations of ill wishes and ill intent. Unless you’re a saint, we all have the beginnings of one inside of us. For most people, they just stay dark little seeds. But there are plenty of those who keep feeding the beast, so it keeps growing, and if those people have the misfortune of crossing paths with someone like me—”

“A djinn,” Jace supplied. Stepping forward, he shoved the black box into Samir’s chest. “Dispenser of bad luck and the walking, breathing Monkey’s Paw. Again, a warning would’ve been nice, Simon. One errant wish around him, and we could end up losing a body part.”

“What the hell would I want with one of your body parts, you glorified pest control!” Samir rebuffed. “I couldn’t even give it away at the shadow market as kelpie kibble!”

“Of course you could,” Noelle disagreed mildly. “Kelpies will eat anything. I once saw one eat a preta, and do you know what pretas eat? Poop. Just poop.”

“Excellent point,” Brielle chimed in. “Poop eating bottom feeder? Shadowhunter? No real difference.”

“Brielle,” Felix admonished as he adjusted his glasses. “Let’s do try to get along until this is done. Afterwards, you can sling as much mud as you want.”

“After this, the only thing I’ll be slinging is shadowhunter ass out of our house.”

“A sentiment I second,” Sage concurred. She looked over her alabaster shoulder at Leilani. “Except for Alec, of course. He may stay as long as he likes.” Nodding, Leilani looked out over the lobby somberly. She was wearing the visage they were all use to, ever beautiful and easier to digest than her true, glorious unadulterated self, but if Simon focused hard enough, he could catch glimpses of that deep, more-brilliant-than-violet in the flash of her irises.

“Such an unfortunate waste of life,” she sighed.

“Debatable,” Samir muttered.

“I did not mean the death,” Leilani amended. “I meant the lives that were lived and lost defending such a trade. A waste. An awful waste.”

“A waste still in the making,” Jang-mi murmured quietly, cocking her head thoughtfully as she stepped out from behind Sage and Brielle. “One is missing.”

“She’s right,” Clary confirmed. “Look! Over there!” She swung her small hand out toward the doorway that led deeper into the Fenslage stronghold, and there, on the left side of the doorframe, was a bloody handprint, fresh and dripping. Samir tossed a cool glance toward it lazily.

“Ah, you mean Agas’ cocoon casing?” he replied. “Yeah, he crawled off when Agas got bored and moved on to one of his buddies’ intestines. I didn’t see much point in going after him. He isn’t long for this world, and we need someone to raise the alarm anyway. That is what we want, right? Chaos. Fire burning everywhere, and trappers running around not knowing their heads from their asses.”

“Yes, I do believe that is what we discussed,” Felix said. “We raise as much hell in as many places as we can to spread the trappers thin while Goldilocks and the three leather bears go rescue Prince Charming. In short, we use the same strategy the Fenslage used last night on the Institute. As they say, what goes around—”

“—comes back with vengeance,” Jace finished. “And for the record—Goldilocks wishes her hair looked this good.”

“Oh be still my beating heart,” Brielle groaned. “Oh, wait, that’s right—I’m dead inside. And thoroughly unimpressed.” 

“Is she always like this?” Jace demanded of Simon.

“I’m not answering that,” Simon snapped back lowly. Almost playfully. “She knows where I sleep, man.” 

“Smart vamp,” Brielle purred before turning to Sage. “Now, shall we go set something on fire?”

“Let’s start in the kitchen,” Sage proposed. “They better have some decent booze. I need a nightcap.”

“Take it easy, Sage,” Noelle warned. “We don’t want a repeat of Panama City.”

“Okay, what exactly happened in Panama City?” Simon asked curiously. “Isn’t that where you had your run in with Aetos?”

“Let’s just say sororities, peach margaritas, and cursed necklaces don’t mix well,” Sage brushes with a flick of her platinum waves. Simon, quite unsatisfied, sputtered, but before he can demand his hunger sated, Samir clapped him on the back.

“Trust me, it’s a story for another time,” he said. “One that, ironically, sounds better after you had a margarita or two. There’s a part—or three—that are easier to digest after you’ve got some alcohol in you. And even then, you’ll never look tiramisu the same again. Be glad you can’t eat it anyway, because, if you could, you’d never eat it again.” Noelle visibly gagged.

“Ugh, you just had to mention the tiramisu, didn’t you?” she groaned. “You’ll pay for that.”

“On that note, should we get this show on the road?” Sage interjected before Samir could muster a comeback. “We are on a clock here.”

“Yes,” Leilani agreed. “After tonight, we only have one day left, and it will take me nearly that long to finish what Valentine started. Time is of the essence.”

“Well then let’s roll out,” Samir said loudly. “But first—” He looked down pointedly at the pulpy tatters of a catalogue and then up at Tawrich and Agas. “Darlings, somewhere in this house of horrors, is a zoo. Be a dear—find it and open all the cages. And if anyone tries to stop you—” His eyes flashing a searing scarlett, he kicked at the book’s pulverized pages. “—do what you did to this monstrosity to their face.”

Felix had been moving a little slowly, Noelle noted, ever since they split off from the others, and he seemed to be massaging his temples with greater and greater frequency the deeper they made their way into the Fenslage’s stronghold.

“You alright?” she asked quietly. 

“So much pain,” he breathed out raggedly. “There is so much pain in this place. So many wrongs unaddressed. Unanswered for. I can’t describe how immense it is—the pain. The rage. The despair.” Noelle was certain he was right. There was probably no combination of words that could capture the travesties that undoubtedly infected the walls around them like black mold. How many poor souls had succumbed to chains and departed believing they were less? How many had died still thirsty for the freedom they were owed, and how many had learned to survive ever denied and parched? How many had promised vengeance? How many laments were assaulting Felix’s mind? How many voices were begging for recompense?

“Do you want to rest a minute?” she asked, pausing before a plain white door. Closed, it bore the words “Employees Only” in capitalized, bolded red print. “I think we were alone.”

“No, I’m fine,” Felix rebuffed stiffly. Adjusting his glasses, he peered deliberately past her at that white door. “And we’re not.” She followed his gaze, and, suddenly the smell of stale salt rushed at her nostrils, a stench that was the pale, absurd imitation of a sea breeze. Knowing sunk to the bottom of her stomach like a boulder tossed into cold, dark waters.

“I am not going to like what’s behind this door, am I?” Felix’s answer was crisp and short.

“No. You’re not.”

But she reached out a hand and gripped the brass doorknob anyway. Because, knowing what she instinctively knew, how could she turn back? Her mama had taught her better than that.

Turning the knob, she pushed the door opened and stepped into a watery grave. That’s what it was, as far as Noelle was concerned, the walls of captive waters. The rank stench slammed into her like a monsoon flood, and she nearly drowned in disgust, the odor of waste and defecation choking and clogging every sense. A trill in her throat, she stalked forward, steps as fluid as a fin in water, until the glass was in touching distance. Stone-faced, her reflection emerged transposed over the grey-green prison, and, at first, she couldn’t see beyond that—the murky water and the crystal clear rage.

But then a shadow swam forth, taking curvaceous shape the nearer it came, and soon a lovely yet haunted visage took form, an aquamarine-haired mermaid who was undoubtedly breathtaking in freer seas. Yet, here, she was but a sketch, a poor caricature of any true, real self. She cocked her head at Noelle and squinted.

_Are you one of us?_ the mermaid’s garnet gazed seemed to ask. _Because you certainly not one of them._

More shadows came, solidifying into more beautiful, living ghosts. They looked at each other. They looked at Noelle. They then looked over their shoulders and, slowly parted for another shadow. Bigger. Darker. And infinitely more real. Infinitely more alive. With eyes the color of the evening sea on fire, this was a spirit too strong to lie down and die a living death. Dreads streaming behind him, he barreled at the glass with a powerful swing of his crimson tail, stopping just a millimeter short of collision, only his large palm slamming against the transparent wall. 

His unblinking stare didn’t pose a question. It stated a fact.

_You and I are the same._

Reaching up, Noelle pressed her own palm against the glass, matching its heel to the heel of the one on other side. Her fingers were not long enough to align perfectly with his, making her hand seem very childlike in comparison, but the kinship was undeniable.

“This is not how I ever pictured this moment,” she said to no one in particular. “I never thought I’d meet my people like this.” Placing her other palm against the glass, she tilted her forehead forward and down until it met hard and smooth and tepid. Her eyelids fluttered shut, her focus solely on the ebb and flow of her breath. Yet, she did not need to see to know that the male on the other side was mirroring her movements. The bond was instant but more than instinctive. It was sure, unshakable knowing of shared roots and ancestors. They came from the same forgotten primordial sea. Had the same deadly melody woven into their DNA. Heard the same sweet beckoning from the open ocean. But the difference was Noelle could answer, while her kin could not. How long had it been? How long had he been denied the silk of the ocean waves against his skin and scales?

Tremblingly she exhaled. That pain, of all the pain in this horrid place, Noelle could imagine. She could feel it, the pain and all the bellowing fury of the seven seas that came with it.

“Get away from Odysseus, you pest!”

She and her kin flung their eyes open at the same time, and, mildly, she noted that their eyes are also the same blue-black tempest.

“That is not his name,” Noelle replied. Her words were legato, a smooth, low note sewing them together. She pushed off the glass and slid into a half-spin, her braid following behind her in a low swing. Directly across from her, near the center of the room, stood who a woman who was all sticks and bones. In her wiry hands, she clutched a long hunting rifle, the stock propped up on a bone thin shoulder, its long, sleek barrel pointed straight at Noelle’s heart.

Noelle simply cocked her head and smiled. The woman’s stance didn’t falter, but the usual recoil still twisted in her gaunt face. Yet, for the first time, the pang of shame did not nip at Noelle. Instead, there was only delight and a wetted appetite.

“You think it will be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, don’t you?” Noelle murmured. “Well, I’m no fish. And neither is he.” The woman’s grey eyes darted past Noelle to the male selkie only to realize too late that was not to whom Noelle was referring as Felix stepped into her line of sight. He had been hiding in shadows right beside that unassuming, deceiving white door, and as the trapper had stormed into the liquid mausoleum, it had concealed him from her. Her reflexes were sharp, lethal, and she pulled the trigger without hesitation. But Felix’s fingers were already mid-snap, and bullet and gun crumbled to harmless ash.

Twenty years ago, Judith Fenslage had caught the grandest quarry of her career. She had been barely a woman at the time and overeager to prove herself to a critical mother who reserved all her rare moments of approval for Judith’s twin brother. Jedidiah was superior, in both spirituality and skill, but Judith had sought to prove that she was not without talent. And Odysseus—he had been both test and reward. He had slipped her net so many tips she had thought herself insane for trying just one more time, let alone a dozen. But, in the end, she had succeeded. It had required vast creativity, a bit of luck, and the sacrifice of another valuable prize, used as bait to reel in the real prey and discarded once its purpose had been served. With burgeoning jubilation and a touch of regret over the necessary waste, Judith had watched that lure sink into the ocean’s deepest place.

So why was it standing before her now, young, whole, alive?

“You…” Judith hedged. “You can’t sing in here, not unless you want your little birdie disemboweling himself.” The bait laughed, her voice a twinkling titter juxtaposed absurdly against her wide spread of pike teeth.

“‘Birdie’ is a warlock,” she said. “He’s got a spell or three to safeguard his ears.”

“Five,” the warlock amended, shrugging. “If we are counting.” As if to emphasize his point, he snapped his fingers again, and cerulean sparked to life, swirled, and stretched until it encircled his head in a cobalt bubble. Then, bored, he clasped his hands behind his back and smirked at Judith before looking to the living, breathing bait. 

“Any other concerns,” asked the bait, “about me singing or anything else?”

“ _Any final words?” you mean_ Judith spat internally. _You aren’t worth a single one._ The bait, as if hearing her, giggled savagely.

“Oh, don’t worry, I am not going to sing. We both know you wouldn’t survive to the end of the song, and I don’t want to kill you.”

“Oh really?” Judith laughed. “You had no problem killing my son.” Benedict, her sweet baby boy. When this was all over, she would fall into the tiny million pieces her heart ached to be, but right now there was no time for breaking. She had to survive a ghost’s revenge first.

“Your son, in a sense, killed himself,” came the reply, cold as a midnight wave. “All his dark desires ate him alive. Me? I’m not hungry. And if even if I was, even if I was starving to death, I’d rather watch the meat rot off your bones than eat a single morsel. At any rate, you don’t deserve to die. You deserve to _suffer_ —as they have suffered.”

She spread her arms wide, gesturing to the glass. Behind it, Odysseus floated imposingly above her, his stare hurricane black. He grinned toothily, and suddenly Judith could see it as the bait—the girl—smiled too. It wasn’t just the lost-long lost prize Judith saw in her face. 

Her mind groped wildly for the past, digging into the box that held her greatest treasure, and managing to fish out a fistful of fragments. Odysseus thrashing in a rising net. A hand breaking free and reaching out to a turbulent sea. A sunflower shimmer of scales fading into underwater mist. Another shimmer too, so much smaller and so very easy to forget.

“You—you’re—” Judith did not get to the chance to finish as a crystalline crack cut her off. All around her, glass was splintering, fissures dancing and crisscrossing until they ran out of dance floor and collided. 

It seemed that there was time for breaking after all.

The tomb imploded in a violent resurrection. Noelle doubted the Fenslage really registered it. The moment she had opened her mouth to let loose a singular, shattering screech, the spindly woman had gone dumb and slack-jaw, and as the water rushed forth to swallow every ich of air, she was swept way without protest. 

Noelle let the waves scoop her up. Her lungs easily adjusted to the abrupt loss of air, but her tail was back at home, securely locked in an unassuming jewelry box. Though she was no slouch of a swimmer when wearing legs, these waters were too enraged to navigate, so she rode the current, which swirled dizzyingly downward in a funneling whirlpool. At the bottom, where the watery cone churned into its point, glowed a pool of bioluminescent azure, and the faint burnt sugar taste of magic mixed in with stale salt. A portal, Noelle noted mildly as she watched water and water spirits disappear through the glittering veil. The mermaid with jewel-aquamarine locks, already looking healthier and more beautiful, latched onto the unconscious Fenslage’s ankle and, with a wide, wrathful semper, dragged her down, and then they were gone, sucked into the gleaming void. Resignation, not glee, settled in Noelle’s chest. The Fenslage would suffer, but she would not understand why.

The current carried her closer to the vortex. Her body turned into another bend of the spiral but jolted to a stop, suddenly suspended though the waves continued to swirl past her. She glanced down and saw a loop of cerulean wound around her waist, a makeshift, magical fishing line that started to reel her upward. Then she was tugged again, this time downward, by a large hand encasing her wrist. She looked up and found stormy sea black-green staring back.

“ _Zeena_.” The male selkie’s voice was deep and rough like a wave crashing upon jagged rocks. He probably hadn’t used it in a good while, yet his cadence was certain, this word full and firm. Noelle didn’t know what it meant. Was it a greeting? A plea? Was it _come_ or _you belong with me_? Was it all these things? Was it more?

Her only answer was a deliberate look downward at her human legs, useless—detrimental—where the portal below led. The male followed her gaze, and, for a moment, they both hovered, floating in rushing, whirling water.

But, then, he looked up again, the storm dispelling from his irises to reveal a dark maple brown sky. Her eyes morphed to match, pecan brown peeking through tempest ebony like boughs of light breaching storm clouds. The bond of brown sealed an unspoken agreement: She had to return to the sea eventually, and, when she did, he would be waiting.

He let go and swam decisively down, disappearing into the blue. The last of the water followed him, and Noelle was left behind, suspended and soaked through. Slowly, the string of azure lowered her until her feet reached the slick floor, which was sprinkled with glass and coral shards, a graveyard’s remains.

Felix strolled to her side.

“Does it count as setting things on fire if we use water?” he mused.

“Whatever you saw in their heads,” Noelle said, “don’t tell me please. Not tonight.” Felix pushed his glasses up the incline of his nose.

“Didn’t plan to.” Wiping away the wetness from her eyes, she smiled dangerously.

“Of course it counts. Because despite what Samir and his darlings might think, a flood can wreck just much havoc as a flame.”


	25. Part II, Chapter 15: No Folly of the Beast

Her clan was dying. Their screams filled the house like an infestation, burrowing into the walls and between the floorboards, and Keren didn’t know where to start or how to triage. When Benedict had expired against the doorway to his study, Jedidiah had immediately marshaled their nearest kin, which unfortunately had included Aunt Judith, who had to watch as Keren hurriedly pulled her son’s mutilated corpse out of the way in the same manner as she might have lugged a trash bag out to the dumpster. But wailing and tears were out of the question right now, and Aunt Judith had followed instructions like the seasoned solider she was and headed off to the lobby to the assess the damage. 

Keren had been given instructions too, specifically to head to the quarry floor and make sure the shadowhunter was still secure, but she sensed that, even as she scurried down the stairs, that it was a fool’s errand. Keahi’s appearance at the bottom of the staircase only justified her dread.

"Out of the way!” she growled, but he didn’t move.

“It’s too late,” he said. 

“I said, ‘Out of the way!’”

“The shadowhunter has company,” Keahi insisted, folding his arms. “More shadowhunters specifically. You might have gotten the drop on them before, but they’re on high alert this time around, and shadowhunters, as a rule, take exception to their comrades being kidnapped and chained up like dogs.”

Keren’s breaths were ragged and heavy. The nauseating wave of panic that seized her stomach was not something she had felt since ice blue flames had erupted out of her fingertips for the first time. She accused Keahi with a dagger-sharp glare.

“You said she’d come alone!” He merely chuckled.

“When did I say that? For the way I remember it, I only said that I could make her come to you. I never made any promises about her coming alone. Would you have come alone, even if you had said you would?” _No_ , a part of Keren acknowledged, but she wasn’t about to take on any piece of blame for this. This was _not_ her fault. This was not _her_ fault.

“What about negating the power of her little pets like you did last night?”

“Last night, my sister wasn’t expecting me to be there, but tonight, she knew full well where I’d be. So she’s actually working against me. We tend to cancel each other, you see, especially when we disagree.” Another wave assaulted Keren’s gut.

“So, you’re useless. Absolutely useless. No, you’re worse than useless! You let me think this would work. That risking my neck to storm a shadowhunter nest and trapping one of the wasps would you bring your sister to heel. Do you know what is happening right now?

“Yes,” he answered flatly. “What I said would happen. I told you my sister is force of a nature, and like a force of nature, she is bearing down on this house with the might of heaven and hell behind her. And now it is time to go before she learns that the shadowhunter can no longer be held against her, because once she does, she will ensure the destruction of this house, along with anyone who is stupid enough to remain inside.”

Keren’s stomach spasmed again, not with nausea, but with sickening understanding. The truth was right there, unabashed in this beast’s face.

“You wanted this to happen,” she murmured, taking one step back up the stairs. “You planned on this happening.”

“I didn’t do anything, Keren,” he denied. He stepped onto the stair she had just vacated and leaned in. “I didn’t make you choose any of the choices that you chose. I didn’t lie to you or trick you. I did give you an out. I told you exactly what would happen if you stayed the course of the Fenslages’ redemption. But you stayed the course anyway. ‘This’ is the result. It’s no folly of mine. And now it’s time to go.”

He started to reach for her, but, shaking her head, she jumped up two more steps.

“No,” she hissed fiercely. “No, I’m not going anywhere. If this house is going down, then I’m going down with it. Because Fenslage don’t run away and leave family behind. So if you want to go, be my fucking guest! But I am not running. Fenslage don’t run.”

And then she turned and went, climbing the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her.

Red-eyed, Ephraim had been headed for his bedroom when the amber-eyed monster moseyed into his path. Her golden face was an eerily beautiful portrait of savagery, a speckle of blood adorning her cheekbone. She sported no visible cuts or wounds.

“You!” he cried, whipping out the gun strapped to his hip. Fenslage didn’t usually hunt to kill—the profit was in a living catch—but occasionally a customer preferred a trophy over a pet. And then there were the beasts that were too wild to pin down. Guns were a necessary evil to destroy evil.

“I got you now, you bitch!” Cocking her head, the she-devil wiped the blood off her check with a swipe of a finger pad, which she then brought to her lips and sucked clean.

“I’m supposed to be scared?” she hummed. “Of the runt of the litter?” Ephraim’s grip tightened harder.

“What did you say?”

“Runt. Of. The. Litter,” she over-enunciated. “A waste of perfectly good milk and therefore best put out of its misery.”

“You’re talking an awful lot for something about to become a deer mantel!”

“And you’re taking an awfully long time to pull the trigger,” she replied, a cackle underneath her words. “Your sister would’ve taken the shot by now. Her hands wouldn’t be shaking either.” Her glittering topaz stare drifted down, but Ephraim kept his eyes on her. If he didn’t look, he could pretend that she was wrong.

“No wonder your father has washed his hands of you,” she pressed on as if smashing salt into an open fissure of flesh. Leisurely, she began to approach, her gait a serpent’s sway. “Why bother with you when he has Keren? She is everything you’re not—everything you want to be but never will. You’re too brash. Too slow. Too _dumb_.”

There it was, the write-off that was the story of his life since age thirteen. The scar stretched across his face still felt as fresh as the night he had stumbled home a failure. His father’s perpetual disdain had kept it tender, while Keren’s exasperation never let the pain subside. He had always known, to some degree, that the seat of Fenslage clan would be hers—her talent was too great for it not to be—but would it really have been so hard to cut him a little slack? …To be kinder?

Now this creature was following her lead, poking fun at the blemish. Enough. His father and his sister might have turned away, might have written him off as a runt, but a lowly devil’s spawn did not have the right to insult her better.

_“Ephraim, no!”_

The skin of his hands caught fire, an artic flame erupting in his palms and quickly spreading around to the backs and up the fingers. The fire burned like frostbite on steroids, shoving him to his knees, the gun dropping from his hands as it incinerated his nerve endings. 

He had managed the shot, though. He had heard the bang of the bullet’s exit out of the barrel ballooning to fill the hallway. Gritting out a grin, he looked up to savor his victory. 

A screech exploded from his lungs. Amid the agony, he couldn’t tell if it was because of his still burning hands or the sight of his father sprawled out on the ground, a shock of crimson rapidly spilling across his chest.


	26. Part III, Chapter 1: Last of Our Kinds

Part III: Some Touch of Pity

_“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.”_

_“But I know none and therefore am no beast.”_

-William Shakespeare, _Richard III_

Chapter I: Last of Our Kinds

Of all the ways Simon had imagined that this night would end, Jedidiah Fenslage gunned down by his own blood was not one of them. Nor was Keren Fenslage delivering swift vengeance via flames summoned from hell’s coldest pit of misery. The white of her eyes went pitch black, her cerulean irises stark, burning circles against an abyss.

Keren, he noted dumbly, was not a mundane. Nor was she forgiving. Her brother’s hands were swiftly burning to useless lumps of bone and charred flesh, but she did nothing to reign in her rage. It was left to Leilani to smother the flame with a gale of azaleas, far weaker than her usual might but enough to banish the burning blue. 

The boy, though, continued to shriek as the thick, charcoal smoke evaporated, unveiling the true lurid extent of the damage. He would never hold a gun—or anything else—ever again.

“What have you done?” Keren wailed, rushing to her father’s side. She pressed her palms against the gunshot wound, but the blood would not be stopped, streaming and spreading across the hallway tile.

“K-Keren,” Jedidiah croaked. His eyes widened in a failing effort to remain open…alive. “D-don’t fret, my child. Aa-ll is in God’s-s plan. …You must go… You must sur-vive… You are the family’s…fu-ture…”

“Future?” Ephraim howled maniacally. He raised his arms as a smoking accusation. “Look what she’s _done_ to me. She’s no Fenslage. She’s not one of us.”

“Indeed, she is not.”

Not too far from Leilani and Simon, the air rippled like a curtain dropping, and Jang-mi emerged into visibility, crimson-eyed Samir silent behind her. She cocked her head in cool curiosity, and her hair fell away, revealing two large eyes of feral tangerine.

“If she were of Fenslage blood,” Jang-mi expounded, “she would’ve seen an enemy of her imagining, not who was really there.” She spoke so delicately, as if she was merely describing the shape and hue of a rose.

“Jang-mi,” gasped Simon, “what did you do?” It’s a stupid question—Simon knew what she had done and why she had done it—and he expected her to be affronted by its idiocy. Yet, her lips smoothed into a vulpine grin.

“Avenged my blood,” she purred. “As their hate was my family’s undoing, so it is their own end.”

Ephraim lobbed a fiendish glare at her and lowered his right stub toward a utility belt strapped to his waist, perhaps forgetting he had no means to grasp the knife it contained, and when he realized the futility of the gesture, more raging red rushed to his skin.

“You did this?” he hissed. “You killed my father?”

“He’s not dead!” Keren screamed, but Jang-mi summarily ignored her.

“No,” she corrected Ephraim calmly. “ _You_ did this. _You_ aimed the gun. _You_ fired it. _You_ aimed and fired simply because _you_ didn’t see a person. This is _your_ doing. And I am only here because your family killed mine—my whole family—for a little bit of magic.” With long, pale fingers, she tugged down her collar to bare the bead that sat at the base her throat. It was the shade of ballet slippers and little bigger than the average pearl.

Ephraim fell back onto his buttocks, his arms limp and useless at his side. Simon bet his father had regaled to him the trapping of the last werefox skulk like an old, glorious war story. He bet little Ephraim had cheered every time Jedidiah felled the head vixen and had taken comfort in the belief that all the monstrous foxes died with the story’s end.

Except the story wasn’t over, not really, because one kit had survived.

“If you’re here for revenge,” Ephraim growled, “then finish it.”

“I have finished it,” Jang-mi replied. “You are the only Fenslage who will see tomorrow’s light. As my life was spared, however accidental, I will spare your life. A life for a life. We will be the last of our kinds together. Besides—” She looked purposefully at his blackened, ruined hands. “—killing you is a kindness you do not deserve.”

“Hey, were-bitch!” Keren snarled, her palms still submerged in the bloody geyser gushing from Jedidiah’s chest. “ _I_ am still here.” Samir started at the slur and raised a hand trembling with hazy magic, but Jang-mi gently pushed it back down.

“So you are,” she acknowledged, “and I have no quarrel with you…for you are no Fenslage.” Keren gnashed her teeth.

“I am—”

“D-don’t li..sten t-o it.” Jedidiah’s words were more slurring moans than sensical syllables, but they were loud enough to command everyone’s full attention. Keren’s eyes, still blazing blue against black, flew to him.

“You….you are a Fen-s-lage…in ever-y way…that…ma-tters.”

Slowly, Keren retracted her hands.

“….You knew,” she whispered. She stood and took a step back. And then another. “You _knew_.” Jedidiah's right fingers twitched and lifted a hair from the ground.

“K-eren,” he rasped beseechingly. “Ke-ren—”

“You knew,” Keren said again. She hiccupped a chuckle. “Of course you knew. How couldn’t you? But you let me believe…. I wasn’t ever the hunter, was I? No…I was the hunting dog.”

She threw her head back and laughed. She laughed long, hard, and bitingly—burningly—cold.

“I see now,” she forced out between the hyena yelps. “Humans can only do so much, but something like me? The sky’s the limit! I have a shot at catching anything I damn well please. Even a high-powered warlock. As the saying goes, fight fire—” She snapped her fingers, and ice blue flames alighted at their tips. “—with fire.”

“You killed Ito,” Ephraim inculpated. “Not some random fey or demon. You.”

“Me!” Keren giggled as she snapped the flames away. “Ito. Bane. It was all me! I kept this family from the brink of obliteration, but all the while I was just a puppet on a string!” Suddenly, the laughter died, and only undisguised disdain remained.

“Well, I am done,” she proclaimed. “I’m no one’s pet, not anymore.” Resolutely, she turned her back and began to stomp down the hallway.

“K-k-eren,” Jedidiah begged. “K-eren. Ker…” Her name slipped back down his esophagus, as the quivering tension faded from his body, his eyes going soft and then glassy. Ephraim heaved out a piercing sob, burying his head in his forearms, but Keren’s march did not falter. Before she disappeared, Simon’s acute hearing caught her muttered farewell.

“Burn in hell.”


	27. Part III, Chapter 2: The Rift of Blood

“Are we really just going to let her ride off into the sunset?” Brielle asked through grinding teeth. “I get that she’s your brother’s worse half, Leilani, but Keren Fenslage is the reason why this last week has been hell. She shouldn’t get to walk without someone punching her face in.”

“She’s no Fenslage,” Jang-mi chirped. The gloomy veil that Simon had never once seen her without had seemed to be discarded, her hair tucked behind both ears, revealing a prettily bright face.

“Jang-mi has a point,” Felix murmured. “What could we do to her that’s more painful than what’s already happened? She’s just learned that everything she ever believed about herself is a lie, and the family that told her that lie—the only family she’s ever known—is dead.” Adjusting his glasses, he glanced over his shoulder, and Simon followed his gaze. Behind them, the Fenslage compound sat as an unassuming slab of brick and concrete. It could easily be mistaken for a factory or warehouse, the exterior never betraying the horror inside. And as it had existed in anonymity, it would crumple unnoticed, a neglected, forgotten crypt.

“Still, I don’t like the idea of her lurking out there,” Brielle growled. “It’s like knowing the boogeyman is out there, somewhere, and I have better things to do than check under my bed every night. Like sleeping.”

“I agree with Brielle,” said Sage. “She might not be a Fenslage by blood, but she was still raised to be a Downwolder-catching, killing machine. The fact that she’s a Downworlder herself makes it worse, not better, because she has more than brawn and brain at her disposal. And we thought she was dangerous before? I can only imagine what she’ll do now that the muzzle’s off.”

“So what do we do?” Samir queried. “Does the trapper become the prey?” His eyes flashed crimson, hinting that he might relish a good hunt.

“We don’t have time to go on a wild goose chase,” Noelle rebuffed tiredly. The night’s events had taken their toll on her, and faint circles were beginning to ring her eye sockets. “Besides, from it what sounds like, she probably wants to be far, far away from here.” Brielle snorted.

“I wouldn’t be so sure—”

“The man she loved as a father was bleeding out and calling her name, and she walked away,” Simon cut in, rubbing his upper arms absentmindedly. “Instead of blaming us or her ‘brother,’ she blamed him and walked away. She washed her hands of him.” He nodded toward the compound. “She washed her hands of this place. She’s done with anything Fenslage, and that, I think, includes us. We’ll just remind her of what she wants to forget.”

In that way, he thought to himself, Keren wasn’t so different from them. In another dimension, maybe she was exactly like them….one of them, even. Perhaps, in that world, her room was right next to Simon’s, and, in the dark hours before dawn, they commiserated over the loss of their humanity. Maybe, in another world, Keren could be understood. Pitied. But in this world, her crimes were too great, the rift of blood too deep. The best Simon could offer her was deferment.

“It’s your call, Leilani,” he sighed. “Out of all of us, she’s hurt Magnus the most. So if you want to hunt her down and make sure she can’t ever hurt him again, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Her honey amber eyes solemn, Leilani didn’t not answer immediately. Her raspberry pink lips were a placid straight line, not a grimace, just resigned ambivalence. After a moment, she suddenly dropped her human guise, and her divine-kissed skin and wings shone like the rays of the rising sun.

“Is that what you want, sister? To ensure my _conpar_ cannot ever harm your little seedling of a warlock?”

They all, except for Leilani, bolted back as Keahi descended from above, six tremendous wings of hot, molten lava gliding on the night breeze. His skin, glittering whiskey gold, glowed as fiercely as Leilani’s, and his hair streamed behind him as one long, searing orange flame. As he landed, the grass at his feet turned the color of ash and death, which served to highlight the shocking electric, acid blue-purple of his pupil-less irises. With this unsettling, burning lapis, he surveyed them and smirked.

“You told them, sister.”

“I did not see an alternative,” Leilani replied somberly, “given your actions.”

“Has it not all turned out well? The trappers are gone, no longer a threat to your posterity, and my _conpar_ is free of false bonds.”

“Turned out well? Life was taken, brother. Death is not to be crowed over. And you _conpar_ …” Leilani shook her head, cherry blossom petals fluttering from her floral mane. Keahi responded with a scorching sneer.

“This debate again? Do you still think I should’ve chosen the same path as you? Wither away as she loves an unworthy, lesser thing? Weep as she dies a meaningless death? Scramble for scraps of what should have been? No, I think not. I chose not.”

“You cut her adrift and assume she’ll swim to you for refuge. But she may choose to float alone. And that is her choice. She has a choice, brother, and even if you resort to trickery to steal it from her, it is still hers.”

The malicious mirth in Keahi’s grin evaporated, and hot-coal colored trepidation settled in.

“Sister,” he sighed, “it is done.” 

“Yes,” she agreed, “it is done. I hope it turns out ‘well’ for you, brother. Farewell.” She began to turn, but Keahi, with a flap of his steaming wings, lunged and grasped her by the wrist.

“It is done,” he reiterated. “So what is left for us to quarrel over?” Her deeper-than-violet eyes widening, Leilani yanked her wrist free, a hail of frost blue hydrangea and Tuscany crimson marigold erupting out of the wave of her golden hand. The storm, as delicate as it looked, was an assailment of thorns, and Keahi summoned a shield of flame that spanned the whole of his towering body, but he was still forced to retreat a good ten feet.

“What is left _indeed_!” Leilani wailed, her composure completely broken. “We made both choices, brother, but the difference is my choice was of no detriment to you. You hurt me knowingly, me and my love, what is left of it anyway. Do you really believe we can be as we were? How dare you think so little of my heart! I am just as capable of fury as you!”

Hydrangea and marigold rallied on either side of her, rising like a charging cavalry. Leilani’s rage had the scent of an English garden but the power and wind gusts of the English navy that laid waste to the Spanish Armada. Leilani was looking to lay waste to her brother, that was certain. She could too, Simon realized. Whatever mutual negation that typically occurred in their proximity was quite overpowered. Her wings of lilies and dew arched and flapped, sending her high into the air, her army following faithfully, and, for a breath, she hovered there over her brother, a glorious angel of reprisal.

“STOP!”

Physically, Alec looked even more haggard than he did the night of Lorenzo Rey’s soiree, but, his arm swung around Jace for support, he seemed a great deal more alive.

“Stop,” he said again, as he and his three fellow shadowhunters came closer. His hazel eyes engorged with awe as they shot to Keahi and then to Leilani on high, he clearly had been told the secret of the siblings’ people. Swallowing, he found his voice. “He got Valentine to back off. And he gave me back this.” 

Stretching out an arm, he held in his palm a perfectly formed rose, red at its edges, soft pink in its middle, and pure white at its center. Her jewel fuchsia eyes falling upon the bloom, Leilani’s floral fury wilted, and she floated down, her heavenly self slipping on her human cloak again. Warily, Keahi dropped his shield of fire.

“See, sister?” he said. “I was thinking of you.” Leilani’s glare was a slice of a December dusk.

“You need not trouble yourself, brother, to think of me again.”

Alec was drawn as tight as his bow string, and Simon was afraid that he, sitting straight as a rod on the parlor couch, would snap in half any second. The shadowhunter couldn’t be faulted, though. After weeks of being separated from the man he loved, they were at last under the same roof yet still apart. It had to be maddening, Simon was sure, and Leilani, poised and beautiful on the other side of the coffee table, offered him a small, sympathetic smile.

“I do not wish to keep you from him any longer than necessary,” she murmured. “But there are things you need to understand before we proceed.” Jace, who was leaning over the couch’s back, rolled his eyes.

“You mean the ritual Valentine screwed up,” he replied tersely. “The one you have to complete.”

“Watch your tone, pretty boy,” Brielle hissed from her spot in a far corner behind Leilani and Simon. Unlike their rest of their housemates, she had refused to leave them alone in a room of shadowhunters, which Simon thought completely silly—Leilani could clearly crush them all. But Brielle would not take “no” for an answer, and Simon knew better than to argue with her. “You forget whose house you’re in.”

“It is all right,” Leilani dismissed. “We are all coming from a place of concern. And he has not said anything that isn’t true.”

“Doesn’t mean he can be rude about it,” Brielle argued.

“Don’t you have some perv to stuff yourself with?” Jace snapped, and Brielle grinned, tilting the brightly glowing points of her antlers down at him.

“I’m good for now. Besides, I don’t feel making the trip all the way back to your Institute. How about a rain check?” Jace moved to push himself up from the couch, but Clary placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and held him in place.”

“Please continue,” Alec asked quietly, his stare on Leilani. Beside him, Izzy patted him on the back and nodded firmly in agreement.

“Yes, please go on.”

“The ritual,” Leilani said, “is called _maithuna._ It is the joining of two persons' body, mind, and spirit. What is two becomes one, inseparable by no earthly power.”

“Maithuna?” Kosuke echoed. He was sitting on the arm of the couch, his hands folded pensively in his lap. “Isn’t that a Hindu principle?”

“Yes, but it is not merely sexual union. It is union in every sense.” Unblinking, her golden eyes shimmered their true, sublime hue. “You and Magnus will share an unbreakable bond, one that is nothing like human marriage or the _parabatai_ pact. Death does not part you.”

“You mean, if one dies, so does the other?” Izzy interrupted. “Does that mean Magnus is now mortal? Or that Alec will become immortal?”

“I do not know what it means for your brother,” Leilani replied apologetically. “My people have no need for the ritual. Bonding happens on its own when we are first…intimate with our _conpars_. We are not whole on our own, though, and maithuna takes two beings who are whole and complete on their own and joins them into something greater. It was meant to be performed upon humans who had pleased my people. Once, it was said that a maithuna was the greatest gift my people could give. But that was before...”

“Before?” Clary reiterated. Leilani parted her lips, but Kosuke answered for her.

“Before Talia Rose,” he said.

“She was the beneficiary of the last maithuna,” Leilani added grimly, “and it was the worst thing that ever happened to her. But her tragedy is a story for another the time. The point is there has never been a maithuna between a warlock and a shadowhunter, so I cannot say how it will change you, only that it will. Permanently.”

“So you want to make sure I’m sure,” Alec surmised. “You want to give me an out.”

“It is a great deal to ask,” she acknowledged. “It could very well be the case that you will become immortal, or at least like my kind, and live a very, very long time—far longer than your family and most of your friends. You will watch them grow old and die. You will watch the same happen to their children and their children’s children. You might even live so long that things about them you thought you would never forget begin to fade. Forever is a great deal to ask, so, yes, I ask and will understand if it is too much to ask.”

Clary’s green eyes found Simon’s brown ones and held tight, despite how much he wanted to tear them away. They only let go when Alec spoke, his voice clear and strong.

“For Magnus, it will never be too much to ask.” 

A smile, tender and ravishing, flowered between Leilani’s aureate cheeks.

“Very well.”

“So what now?” Jace interjected impatiently. “How do you perform a maithuna?” Leilani’s smile widened.

“First,” she hummed, giggling, “I think it is well past time to wake Magnus. Don’t you?”

The path was lined with lotuses possessing pearls for petals and topaz for stamen. Beneath Alec’s boots, cool, starlight rich water rippled with his every step toward the bed encased in poisonous purple blooms and crystal thorns. But he, undeterred by the deadly foliage, lifted his hand and fingered one of the deceptive florets, and instantly, the curtains burst into dust, glittering, dazzling dust that filled the room like an infinity of stars. Yet Alec’s eyes were on the man in the bed, asleep and such a beautiful, longed for sight. 

“Magnus,” he sobbed, relief threatening to topple him over. He rushed to thread his fingers through Magnus’ dark hair, soft and free of spray and gel. Touching him was like drinking a ladle of water after days wandering in the barren desert, but his thirst was far from quenched. With his other hand, he placed the Vow Rose—the flower that had been his buoy in an ocean fraught with grief—right over Magnus’ heart and, leaning down, pressed his mouth against Magnus slightly chapped lips.

If a touch was a sip, then a kiss was a pitcher of the freshest well water.

He could hardly bring himself to pull away, but he managed somehow, and he was quickly rewarded with the hazy gaze of breathtaking, liquid gold cat eyes.

“Al…alexander?”


	28. Part III Chapter 3: The Greatest of These

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The italicized quote to follow in this chapter is an abridged Bible verse from 1 Corinthians 13, the English Standard Version (ESV). Per ESV's website, "the ESV text may be quoted (in written, visual, or electronic form) up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) consecutive verses without express written permission of the publisher, provided that the verses quoted do not amount to more than one-half of any one book of the Bible or its equivalent measured in bytes and provided that the verses quoted do not account for twenty-five percent (25%) or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted." Here is their full policy: https://www.esv.org/resources/esv-global-study-bible/copyright-page/ .

“What the _hell_ is that smell?”

Brielle’s head looked seconds way from exploding, given the way the vein in her left temple bulged and pulsed, and, snarling, she kissed her teeth in revolution as she surveyed the grand foray. Descending the stairs, Simon sniffed the air, and the pleasantly mixed scent of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves nuzzled his nostrils.

“Isn’t that…pumpkin spice?” he murmured as he reached the bottom of the staircase. Brielle shot him with a cannonball of a glare.

“Pumpkin spice?” she growled. “Why does our house smell like the gingerbread man’s ass?”

“I know you feed on corrupted souls,” Jace said, leaning over the left staircase’s railing, “but most people like that smell. It’s warm and fuzzy.” 

“I told you—dead inside,” Brielle snapped back. “I don’t do warm and fuzzy, so again I ask— _why_?”

“Because Sophelia told Eshana to make a cake,” Samir answered. He sauntered out of the dining room and bit cavalierly into an apple. “And Eshana decided on a spice cake. It’s going to be three tiers with an almond buttercream icing. I’d steer clear of the kitchen—you know how Eshana gets when she is the middle of baking a masterpiece.”

“And why would Sophelia do that?” Brielle, unsatisfied, demanded.

“For the same reason she’s got Felix conjuring a pagoda in the garden,” Samir assumed around half-chewed apple. “Probably has to do with the ritual Leilani has to complete.”

“Hold on,” Izzy interjected excitedly, clapping her hands together. “Multi-tiered cake, garden pagoda—are we prepping for a _wedding_? _Alec and Magnus’_ wedding?”

“A maithuna is more than a wedding, but I suppose there are elements that do overlap.” Leilani spoke demurely as she appeared above at the top of the right foray staircase, and the undead life was punched right out of Simon.

She was dressed in a backless gown of blush pink honeysuckle and canary yellow ylang-ylang, the long, delicate petals fluttering like feathers with each step. The silhouette was simple, closely following the curves of Leilani’s body, and its hem brushed against her dainty ankles, both of which jingled with fine bands of gold, her only jewelry. She needed no more adornment than that so phenomenally magnificent she was.

Oak brown eyes as wide as full moons, Kosuke scrambled to offer her a helping hand as she reached the last step, and Leilani, accepting it, gifted him with a grin in gratitude. 

“Tell me that’s not the bridesmaid getup.” Sage was not dressed for the cool autumn weather in her running shorts and crop top, but that was about as much as she could be expected to be covered on the grounds of O’Keefe Place. Her blood ran hot, and she didn’t see much point in clothing and wore just enough to maintain the simile of modesty—sometimes not even that much.

“You can pull it off, obviously,” she went on. “And Noelle, Jang-mi, and Brielle here probably can too. But when your girls are this big—” She outlined her generous breasts with her palms. “—that cut will do nothing for you.”

“Bridesmaids?” Brielle hissed, shaking her head vehemently. “No way. No fucking way.”

“Try telling that to Sophelia,” Sage said, shrugging. “She’s got this thing planned within an inch of its life. She’s got the old man hanging lights, Danny making an ice sculptor of turtle doves, and Samir—” She tilted her head to the side and took note of Samir for the first time. “Oh, you’re back already?” Samir polished off his apple and tossed the core up into the air before snapping his fingers. The remnant of fruit instantly vanished in a puff of smoke.

“It was the Institute and an apartment in Brooklyn, not the Spiral Labyrinth,” Samir explained unflappably. “Besides, the kid told me to hurry.”

“Um, excuse me,” Clary chimed in, “you broke into the Institute _again_? And an apartment in Brooklyn—Brooklyn—you broke into Magnus’ apartment?”

“Where else was I supposed to get the rings? The Lightwood family ring was in the Institute, and Bane’s jewelry collection is in his apartment.”

“You can’t just break into people’s apartments! Breaking and entering is a crime, you know!” Clary cried, and Samir snorted.

“Says the chick who broke into my house only hours ago. At any rate, I’d hardly call it ‘breaking and entering.’ Bane’s apartment didn’t even have wards up. I could’ve sleep walked in. And I have to say, security at the Institute is kind of shoddy. I was in and out like a ghost. Your comrades would’ve been in serious trouble if I had bad intentions, which I did not, so this whole line of conversation is beside the point.”

“For once, genie boy is absolutely right,” Brielle barked. Her stormy blue glare relented a shade as they zoomed to Leilani. “Honey, I’d kill for you, and I get this Maithuna or whatever is important, but I draw the line at bridesmaid. There is no way I’m putting on a damn flower dress.” Leilani blinked.

“I understand if you do not wish to participate,” she replied slowly. “But I must confess I am a little perplexed. Killing is all that is required of a bridesmaid. Your attire would be completely up to you.”

It was everyone else’s turn to be bewildered. 

“Leilani,” Simon said nervously, “what do _you_ mean by ‘bridesmaid’?”

“Do we not mean the same thing?” Leilani asked. “A bridesmaid is someone who distracts and kills the demons attracted to the ritual.”

“Demons?” Samir squeaked. “There are going to be demons?”

“Yes,” Leilani supplied, her amber eyes still dewy with confusion. “At the Maithuna’s end, the bonding of two into one is a moment of divinity. It creates, very briefly, an opening to the heavenly realms—a divine key of sorts—and that attracts demons who want to take advantage of the opening. Playing God invites the devil in.”

_Oh_ , Simon, stunned, thought. _So she had meant that quite literally_. Sage smiled broadly at Leilani’s prettily wide-eye expression and laughed huskily.

“For future reference,” she said, “when mere mortals say ‘bridesmaids,’ they mean girls who attend on and support the bride. They do things like help her wedding plan, pick out her dress, hold her hair after she drinks too much at her bachelorette party, and drive the getaway car.”

“I like your definition better, though,” Brielle sneered eagerly. “I will more than happily rip some demons apart in the name of love. Just lead the way.”

The rose garden was set for a mid-night wedding. Or, maybe better put, it was set for an edge-of-morning wedding. The sky was still mostly dark, but on its horizon edges were hints of ripening blue, and the garlands of fairy lights Mr. O’Keefe had strung along the trellis fencing made the roses of autumn coral glow brightly like heralds of dawn. Their light illuminated a grassy aisle that led to an open pavilion, a simple, square wooden structure decorated at the corners with curtains of gold silk chiffon.

“Will it suit, Leilani?” Felix asked as she and Simon approached. “Sophelia told me we needed an altar but also insisted that the roof had to be left open, so I didn’t get too fancy with it.”

“It’s very nice, Felix, thank you,” Leilani replied. “And thank you too, Sophelia. An open roof is very thoughtful.” Giggling, the child bounced out from behind Felix’s long legs, her grey eyes glinting a cheerful rainbow. In her hands, she clutched a wicker basket, which she swung happily as she rocked on the balls of her small, bare feet.

“You’re welcome, Leilani,” she chirped.

“I am sorry that you and your grandfather cannot attend properly,” Leilani lamented, but Sophelia only shrugged her little shoulders.

“Don’t be—we would be in the way. The best part comes after anyway. There’s going to be cake and _bandrek_!”

“Bandrek?” Simon repeated. “What’s that?” Felix, smirking, adjusted his glasses.

“Does it matter? You can’t drink it. No one wants a repeat of Fourth of July.” Balling his fists, Simon flashed his fangs.

“We agreed _never_ to mention that _ever_ again.”

“Okay, someone needs to spill,” Jace, further up the aisle, demanded playfully. “What is it that no one’s supposed to be mention?”

“You mean the Fourth of July barbecue?” Danny muttered as he stepped through the backdoor and tapped out his course with his walking cane. “We agreed not to talk about it for a reason. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous, and I didn’t even ‘see’ it!”

“Yes, can we not discuss anything stomach turning? I’ve apparently been sleeping for a week and haven’t eaten in longer than that. Please don’t ruin my appetite before I even get a chance to sit down to eat.”

“Magnus!” Clary cried, her forest green eyes darting beyond Danny to the backdoor. There, leaning into Alec’s protective hold, was an awake and alert Magnus Bane. His unflattering plaid pajamas were gone, replaced with a black, glittery suit jacket, a wine red button up, and trousers with a stripe of velvet on either leg—all in all, the very Magnus-esque fashion that Simon was mildly surprised to discover he had missed.

Clary rushed to hug him, throwing her arms awkwardly around the side of him not glued to Alec, and Izzy and Jace did the same in quick succession.

“So glad you’re back and awake,” Izzy sighed. She jabbed her chin at Alec and stuck out her lower lip in a mock pout. “He’s been absolutely unbearable without you.”

“Yeah,” Jace agreed. “Like he had something stuck up his ass, and not in the fun way.” This teasing, however, was a thin cloak for the pain it attempted to conceal, and Magnus smiled at them ruefully.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. The girl who attacked me—in all my centuries, I’ve never encountered anyone like her. She got the drop on me.”

“Trappers thrive on the element of surprise,” Sage stated, her tone somewhat subdued. “And Keren Fenslage? Let’s just say she’s in a league of her own.”

“I still say we should’ve put the bitch down,” Brielle mumbled. “The only good rabid dog is a dead one.”

“Enough for tonight, Brielle, please,” Simon sighed. “We’ve got something more important to do .” 

Magnus’ eyes, golden and cat-slit pupiled, swelled as they landed on Simon, probing him for any sign or tell that he wasn’t real.

“Simon,” he murmured. “You’re—”

“Undead and kicking,” Simon finished for him. “And, I know it’s a year late, but thanks. For that night—thanks. And I’m sorry.”

“No, no, I’m just…I’m glad to see you Simon,” Magnus said. “I’m glad you’re still here.” An ache throbbed behind Simon’s eyes, and, sniffling, he pushed back against the tears that yearned to fall. Leilani touched his shoulder, and he smiled at her gratefully.

“Oh my god,” Brielle groaned, throwing back her head in exasperation. “It’s already too mushy, and we haven’t actually gotten to the wedding-ness. If there aren’t demons for me to kill soon, I’m out. I don’t do mushy.”

“You really are dead inside, aren’t you?” Jace droned disapprovingly. Lifting her head, Brielle smirked.

“Damn straight, Goldilocks.” Blinking, Magnus looked questioningly to Alec.

“Did she say ‘demons’?” he gasped. “There are going to be demons at our wedding?” 

“I’m afraid it cannot be helped,” Leilani explained contritely. “But we’ll keep them from you and Alec. We’ll keep you and your _conpar_ safe.”

Slowly, Magnus stepped away from Alec and took two small, unsteady steps toward Leilani, and she, instantly realizing his aim, strode forward and clasped his arms by the elbow, his forearms resting atop of hers.

“I know you,” Magnus murmured with a slight tremble. “How….how do I know you? We’ve never meet before now, but I know you. When I escaped, I was looking for you. Why? Who are you to me? Who I am to you?”

“Answers you deserve,” Leilani replied quietly. “Answer you will have. But first, what was started must be finished. What is two must now be one.” Her honey eyes beckoned Alec, who immediately closed the small gap between him and Magnus and took his _conpar_ back into his arms.

Meanwhile, Sophelia skipped up to the couple and reached a hand into her basket.

“Something old,” she hummed, pulling out her closed fist and then holding it out toward Alec. Tentatively, he offered his palm, and she dropped into a it a ring. It was a thick band of silver, a straightforward “L” inside a crest.

“The family ring,” Alec, stunned, noted. Smiling, Sophelia reached into the basket again, and, this time, waited for Magnus to reach out a hand. The ring she placed there was a simpler band, but its silver sparkled with traces of wispy magic.

“Something new.” 

“I made this for you,” Magnus croaked to Alec. “I put protective charms on it. I was going to give it to you for Christmas…” His cat eyes rose to embrace Alec’s hazel gaze, and, without saying a word, they exchanged their silver bands, slipping into them onto each’s ring finger.

Sophelia’s smile grew more dazzlingly as she pulled out the next item.

“Something borrowed _and_ something blue.”

It was a fan, an old one, and when Magnus opened it, Simon saw that it had been painted with the design of an intensely blue-violet flower that sat in a nestle of lacey, thread like leaves, and its layers of pointed petals were crowned with green, curving stamen.

“Love-in-mist,” Simon heard Kosuke murmur to himself. Simultaneously, Leilani let a slow, lamenting sigh.

“It made by a friend,” she told Alec and Magnus. “She would’ve been honored, I’m certain, if she knew the role that it come to play this night.”

Simon studied the fan again. Whoever had painted it had been a truly skilled admirer of detail, careful attention having been paid to the delicateness of each petal.

She had been a very talented artist, Hina Ito.

“And lastly, a sixpence in your shoe,” Sophelia finished, handing Magnus and Alec a worn, bronze coin each. “They’re really pennies, and you don’t have to put them in your shoe. A pocket will do.”

“Why a penny?” Jace asked, arms crossed. “Why any of this?”

“Do the Nephilim not know the rhyme?” Mr. O’Keefe said, appearing at the backdoor. “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe. They’re all meant to bring protection, posterity, and prosperity—all of which I wish on you, gentlemen. Sophelia, my dear, I believe it is time to come inside.”

The girl nodded, her smile not lessening in girth, and beamed at Magnus and Alec.

“See you at the party!” she said. “You’re going to love Eshana’s cake!”

By the time they began, morning had drifted a little closer, the horizon blue now peppered with sunrise pink and orange, but it was still dark enough for demons to thrive. So, the phantoms of Simon’s past life and the constants of his current one formed a ring around the garden pagoda, Clary on his left, Noelle on his right, and they stood perpendicular to the pavilion, allowing them to keep one eye on the surrounding garden and the other on the altar. There, Magnus and Alec, standing before one another, were holding hands tightly as Leilani took up the position of officiate. In her hand, she was holding the Vow Rose, and she extended it until the bloom hovered over Magnus and Alec’s conjoined hands. She let go, lowering her arm back down, but the flower stayed, floating steadily in the air.

Leilani then closed her eyes, caramel brown eyelids falling over amber gold irises. When they opened, however, they rose on orbs of pure, brilliant, unnamable violet-purple.

Her entire human costume fell away, leaving only an Eden-born deity.

_“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,_ ” she cried, her words more song than speech, _“but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”_

The Vow Rose began to radiate light, first low and soft like a candle but then steadily more ardent, growing into a bright star.

_“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge—”_ The wind picked up, going from non-existent to a breeze to stronger, and it brought with it a guttural rumble, deep and ravenous. On the other side of Clary, Jace unsheathed his seraph blade.

“Here we go!” he cried over the bellowing wind.

_“—and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”_

A behemoth of a shadow dropped suddenly out of the sky, its castor a winged, lizard like thing, black, scaly, and an odorous mouth of gigantic fangs. The demon descended rapidly, but Noelle let out a glass shattering shriek, and the hell spawn’s flight was thrown off kilter. It had no time to dodge to Izzy’s whip, and the deadly cord wrapped its neck and pulled, snapping it in half. The lizard vanished in an abysmal cloud of tar, but half a dozen more soared out of the darkness to take its place.

“ _If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”_

A demon with the head of a goat and the body of serpent slithered out from one of the rows of roses, and it launched its long body at Jang-mi, but just as its teeth would’ve sung into the flesh of her throat, it sailed right through her and into a swirl of Samir’s smoke and fire. As it disappeared into the flames, Jang-mi reappeared, serene and unharmed.

_“Love is patient and kind.”_

The bloom’s light was now the luminosity of the Milky Way, engulfing Magnus and Alec in its glorious sheen. Leilani’s lily wings were arched high, her cherry blossom locks wafting in burst of sublime spring behind her. She seemed to have no awareness of a bat-faced demon that got dangerously close to the pavilion before succumbing to a hail of icicles fired from Danny’s fingertips.

“ _Love does not envy or boast.”_

Brielle swung her antlers into the soft, spider underbelly of a demon with a woman for an upper half. Gored straight through, the demon woman spewed black ichor and sagged, but Brielle was not done. She grasped two of the demon’s arachnid legs with either hand and fiercely tugged them in opposite directions until the demon split into a bloody mess. Brielle was completely unbothered by the foul, toxic ichor that splattered across her face and instead laughed manically.

“ _It is not arrogant or rude._ ”

Kosuke dispatched two gremlins with deft slices of his katana blade, while, in the pavilion, the Vow Rose began to break apart, its petals becoming long strings of light that looped around Magnus and Alec’s hands. Again and again, the light wound around, tying warlock and shadowhunter together.

_“It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful.”_

Clary threw one of her two _kindjals_ into the chest of a scorpion looking monster and then the other into a three-legged, amphibian hellion. But as that hideous frog crumbled in on itself, an enormous centipede scuttled out of the dark straight at her.

_“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”_

Simon acted on sole instinct, his vampiric speed igniting instantly. In less than a blink, he grabbed Clary about the waist and ferried her out of the oversized bug’s path, clearing the way for Sage and Felix’s emerald and cobalt lightening bolts to zap the demonic centipede to dust.

“ _So now faith, hope, and love abide.”_

Together, Simon and Clary looked to the pavilion in time to witness the bonds of light stream through the pavilion’s open roof into the sky, thickening from many into one. Magnus and Alec were encapsulated in the scintillating column, and, hands still joined, they rose until they were far above the pavilion, their toes level with the treetops.

Leilani stayed grounded, but her eyes—deeper than violent and more brilliant—flew up, past the couple, to where the light met the sky, and as she opened her mouth, the aerial juncture transformed to the same pulsing, divine shade. 

_“These three—but the greatest of these is love.”**_

Light expanded, flowering and unfolding, until the world was awash in magnificent purple, which brightened and brightened to a sumptuous, heavenly gold.


	29. Part III, Chapter 4: Full of Life

“The child was right—I do adore this cake.” Magnus’ voice was an amused drawl, his grin broad and winsome, as he approached Leilani, a plate of half-eaten cake in hand. She had thought she had managed to slip away from the festivities unnoticed, but here was Magnus, standing beside her beneath the willow boughs. 

It was both joy and sorrow to be near him. Both miracle and torture to see in him a spark of what was long been lost.

“Sophelia is never wrong,” she replied quietly. “And Eshana’s baking has no rival.”

“Agreed,” Magnus mused. “And I say that as someone who has eaten many meals in many places.” Taking one last bite, he snapped his fingers, and the cake, plate, and fork all disappeared in a crisp “pop.” He then eased his hands into his pockets and stared with her out at the pond, a bowl over-brimming with moon and starlight.

“Are you not enjoying the party?” she asked finally as a balmy night wind swirled around them, tousling her curls a little.

“I always enjoy a party,” he refuted amiably. “And this party is especially enjoyable. It is after all my wedding reception.” He smiled again, his upward curved lips wordlessly conveying his immense contentment, and Leilani swelled, though whether with satisfaction or ache, she could not say. “I came out here because I believe I have something to return to you.”

Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the fan and presented it to her. Silently, she took it and carefully spread it out open, unfolding the wooden panels one by one until the washi paper was spread fully open. Despite being well over two hundred years-old, the delicate brush strokes were as pristine as they were when first drawn. Lightly, so very lightly, Leilani laid her fingertips over one of the blue petals.

“What was their name?” Magnus asked. “The friend who painted it?”

“…Hina,” she murmured. “Ito Hina.”

“She was gifted.”

“Yes, in a great many things,” Leilani affirmed, as she closed the fan and clutched it in her folded hands. Despite her best efforts, Hina’s face appeared in her memory—round, a warm beige from days beneath a full sun, plump lips, and dark eyes that gazed unwaveringly—and Leilani’s dress changed to better reflect her mood, honeysuckle wilting and melding together to birth crimson spider lilies. The silhouette transformed, too, lengthening until the skirt fell around her legs in ballroom billows.

Centuries later, and the pain still had not dulled. Yet, if she were to go back and live it all again, her choices would not change. She would not act as her brother had, scheming without true regard for anyone else. Hina had deserved the right to choose her own life—her own love—and Leilani could never take it from her.

The tears though…. Leilani would hold those back the second time around. She would find a way to keep the grief from penetrating that deeply. It was grief that only had begotten more grief.

There was a reason why her people did not cry. They did not feel in degrees, only absolutes, and the last natura who had given themselves over to anguish had ended an age. Was it any wonder, then, that her tears had sowed so much pain?

Magnus’ gaze traced the lines of her newly ruby dress.

“There is a story,” he said, “about this flower. A very sad one.” Leilani’s lips tipped into a miniature shadow of a smile as she fingered one of the long, bright red petals.

“Manju and Saka,” she acknowledged. “Bloom and leaf cursed to never meet.” She knew the tale of the doomed lovers and empathized with them easily. She knew that excruciating pain—destined to be whole yet forever only half of who you are.

“According to the legend, they cursed by a god…,” Magnus mused, his voice trailing into an unspoken question.

“It was not of us,” Leilani answered. “My people are capable of capricious cruelty, but a curse like that would never come from our lips, not when we spend decades, sometimes centuries looking for that one special soul. Not upon our worst enemies would we bestow such a fruitless fate.”

Her fate had not been fruitless, she must not forget that. Her time with Hina had been brief, yes, but they had time, more than Manju and Saka had. She had memories to sustain her, memories of Hina smiling and laughing. …Memories of Hina happy. Bloom and leaf had a spring together. That was enough. That had to be enough.

She looked down at her skirt of spider lilies.

“Forgive me,” she said. “This is the wrong dress for a happy night.” She spread her arms wide, and the lilies broke apart, bursting open like fireworks and veiling Leilani in their floral smoke and fire. They then fell to the grass, revealing her in new grab, a draped gown of feathery, deep magenta flowers that trailed behind her in sumptuous hanging sleeves and a long, luscious train.

“Yes,” Magnus admired appreciatively, “amaranth suits you far better.”

“I should hope so,” Leilani sighed. “It is my namesake, after all.” Magnus’ brow furrowed as Leilani allowed her true eyes to shine through her human guise.

“Amarathine,” he half-whispered, and Leilani smiled sincerely at him.

“I was named for that too. I was named for the flower and its color. When you have need of me, call out my name, and I will come.”

“What is it between us?” Magnus queried, his breathe thick and shuddering. “That night, when I escaped from the trappers, I felt a pull, and I followed it not knowing where it was taking me, just that I would be safe once I got there. It led me to you. Why were you the safe place? Why do I feel…kinship to you?”

“Because we are kin now,” she explained gently. “To perform a maithuna, a piece of Eden is needed. It is the ingredient that solidifies the bond, because Eden does not age or wither. It was, is, and always will be. In the old days, my ancestors used nectar of Eden flowers. A few drops on the tongue did the trick. Valentine, however, didn’t have Eden flowers. But he had my tears, and the use of them formed a kinship between you and me. I became a part of you, and you will, in time, discover yourself changed because of me. I will take responsibility for that.”

“You gave me and Alexander a long life together,” Magnus countered. “If you owed me anything, the debt was more than squared when you did.” Lightly, Leilani shook her head.

“It is not a debt. It is duty and privilege, not without selfish intent. You, as you are now, bring me relief. In you, there is now purpose for that which I thought purposeless. In you, something that has only meant grief and sorrow to me may transform into something new….something full of life. So, please, if you have need of me, call out my name, and I will come.”

She reached for his hand, the one bearing his wedding ring, and held it between them. Then, her eyes of amaranthine rose to peer into his feline gold.

“Call upon me, Magnus,” she urged again. “Call out my name, and I will come.”

“What…what is your name?’

Tenderly, she squeezed his hand.

“Amarante, for the bloom and its shade. My name—my natal name—is Amarante. If you call out to me by this name, I will come. No matter where you are, no matter where I am, I will come.”

For the first time in a hundred years, the ballroom of O’Keefe Place was the backdrop to a night of revelry. Garlands of red, fragrant rich roses had been wound around all the columns, while tall, white candles in grand, golden candelabra bathed the space in warm, flickering light. A long table adorned with a Tuscany yellow cloth boasted glasses of hot, spicy _bandrek_ and a three-tiered cake artfully decorated with pearls of buttercream icing and sprigs of honeysuckle. The bottom tier had been in cut into on one side, slices prepared and plated for the guests, and Clary offered Simon one. 

“I can’t eat that,” he refused stiffly. “Food like that makes me…queasy.” As if to emphasize his point, Samir snatched the plate out of Clary’s hand and sent it up in smoke with a crinkle of his nose.

“We agreed,” he said, clapping his hand clean, “no repeat of Independence Day.” Clary’s cheeks flushed bright, coral red as Samir moseyed on to Jang-mi, leaving them in relative isolation.

“Sorry,” she apologized meekly. “That was a poorly thought-out peace offering.”

“It’s fine,” Simon chuckled. “In the beginning, I forgot every now and then too.”

“Is that what happened at the Fourth of July barbecue?” Clary asked, a hint of tease in her tone.

“I didn’t forget that day. I just didn’t care. Seeing all that food spread out—it reminded me of the cookouts our families used to have. It was too much, remembering the days and knowing that I can never go back to them. And then there was the food I could see and smell but couldn’t eat. So I decided that day I was going to eat, screw the consequences. And there were consequences.” He coughed up a little laugh, but it fell flat and lifeless.

“Leilani stayed with me that night,” he went on. “She’s been looking after me since we met.”

“…She seems very kind,” Clary murmured. She glanced pointedly beyond Simon. “And she is gorgeous, of course.” Simon turned to follow Clary’s gaze, and his eyes found Leilani on Magnus’ arm as they came through the ballroom’s entryway. Leilani had changed her gown and was now dressed in divinely dreamy purple, and she, illuminated in candle glow, was a splendid serenade of amber and amethyst.

“Are you and she…?” Clary’s voice trailed off, but when Simon refocused on her, her emerald stare asked that question loudly and without ambiguity.

“Not yet,” he heard himself responding. “But maybe one day. There is something there.” He could admit that now, to both Clary and himself. There was something there between him and Leilani, something he could not run from or deny anymore. What good would it do, going to war with his own heart?

Hugging herself nervously, Clary cleared her throat.

“You’re staying here then, aren’t you? I could ask you to come home, but you would just say—”

“—I am home,” he finished, nodding. “This is my home, Clary.”

“…Your family sat shiva for you,” she informed suddenly through a sharp sniffle. “I went to your funeral and watched your mom cry over an empty grave. I got through that by thinking about the day that you would come home and how I could show her then that you weren’t gone. But your home is here now, and I don’t know where to go from here, Simon.”

“I knew about my family moving on,” he sighed, swallowing. “I used my _encanto_ to tell them to.” That had truly been a night from hell, knocking on his mother’s door some months ago. Watching her face go from shock to joy to horror to finally sorrow in the span of a fistful of sentences.

“Simon! Why—"

“How would I explain it? Why I don’t eat? Why I stay young while they all get older and grayer? I can’t go back. None of us can. Wherever we go from here, Clary, it’s not back. We can’t go back.”

“But there is somewhere to go, right?” Clary pressed, letting her arms fall. “We can be friends again? Someday?”

“I can’t make any promises,” he answered. His lips swerved up into the beginnings of a smile. “But I’m not going to disappear. You know how to find me now. And, as angry as I’ve been, I have missed you, Fray.”

Clary’s lips pressed into a hopeful line, and her eyes brightened to a keen spring green. Yeah, Simon confessed once more silently, he had missed her.

He had missed her a lot.

Violins, spelled to sing without a musician’s assistance, began a slow waltz, a gentle melody that swooped and swayed, and Kosuke saw his chance as Magnus melted into Alec’s arms, leaving Leilani alone in the sepia candlelight. Taking a deep breath, he weaved his way through the room and held out his hand.

“May I have this dance?” he asked. Leilani’s honey gold eyes glimmered a deep, violent-magenta as she glanced down at his hand and then peered back up at him.

She smiled widely and nodded, sliding her fingertips across his palm until their hands joined in a warm clasp. His heart revved as she allowed him to guide her onto the dance floor and then to place a hand on the small of her back, the caramel skin there bare in her backless dress. Lithely, she began to follow his lead, and the heather-like flowers of her gown flared and twirled as they spun.

“You dance very well,” he complimented, braving a look directly into her eyes. They were pools of dawn, invigorating gold rimmed in celestial violent. Absolutely beautiful.

“Thank you,” she replied. “But this is not dancing as my people define it.”

“Oh? Then what do you considering dancing?” She glanced upward in consideration.

“On air,” she decided on, meeting his gaze once more. “In water. Amid flames. About the earth. At the height of our elements—at the height of ourselves. You saw an approximation of it once, when our paths first crossed.”

He blinked, uncertain of what she meant, but then it came to him: Leilani in column of roses and daises, her spiral curls an inky cloud behind her. Simon joining her. His hands on her hips. Their bodies pressed close together.

“Are you and Simon…,” he probed, hoping his casual tone disguised the twist of nerves in his gut, “…together?”

“Together?” she echoed inquisitively.  
“…Is he your boyfriend?” he asked directly. “You two seem very close.”

“Oh,” she murmured, titling her head to the side. “You mean is he courting me. No. After my _conpar_ …passed, companionship of that sort is not something I have looked for. But…perhaps it is time to be open to the possibility. I will live long time yet, and my people were not born to live alone. My _conpar_ lived and loved the one she chose, and I have lived with her choice. I don’t think she will fault me if I choose a soul who chooses me in return. At least, I hope she won’t.”

As she smiled more broadly, her irises glinted a gentle mauve as they spun to a swell of cello. Eyes were on them—Kosuke could feel their indiscreet groping, and he was willing to wager good money that one pair of those eyes belonged to a certain child of the night. But he was undeterred, because he had all that he needed.

A chance. 


	30. Part III, Chapter 5: A Touch of Pity

It was the dark part of morning, hours from sun and more kin to night. It was the time of morning ripe for fleeing, and the air was chilled and unsympathetic as Keren sat on one of the metal benches outside the Greyhound station. Overhead, artificial, orange-yellow light buzzed gratingly like a swarm of flies. Upper lip twitching, Keren blew out a bullet of air, and the lightbulb burst into aquamarine flames, the lightbulb glass swiftly burnt to pulp and dust.

The light died, and Keren settled into the shadows that descended. Now that there was no reason to keep her feelings under lock and key, she left the door wide open, and her power came more and more easily. It throbbed beneath her skin, rushing in her veins as liquid, searing, seething ice that was ready to rise when called.

And she wasn’t afraid to call it anymore. It was all she had now, the only thing that hadn’t deceived her. This freezing burn was the singular true thing about her, so she would let it feed on her fury. Let her life up until now be kindle to stoke the flames. The memories, the lies—the fire could consume it all. She would take the ashes, throw them to the wind, and find new soil in which to plant a new life. There was always a place for someone like her—a storm in need of sky—and there were always people would who pay for the pleasure to loose tempest hail and lightening down upon their enemies.

No need for honor or principle or whatever bullshit her false father had preached. All she needed and all she wanted was space to rage unabashed and unhindered.

To be clear, Keahi was a hindrance, and the steam that began to rise from her skin was a very much unwelcomed herald.

“You’re just going to leave?” he hissed like oil hitting a hot pan. His eyes were sulfuric violet-blue, and its smoldering glow illuminated the supremely handsome plains and valleys of his face, an incarnation of divine vehemence.

Gazing upon it, Keren felt nothing. So strange. So very contrary to the leap her stomach took every time she looked at the portrait of his sister, the one object of note she had been compelled to bring with her. It was strapped to her back right beside the sheath of her blade.

“There is nothing to keep me here,” she replied tonelessly. “That was your plan, right? To show me that my ‘family’ was one big fucking sham? Well, congratulations. You succeeded. I am unfettered and free to do with my life as I please. And it would please me very much never to see you ever again.”

The terminal went from gray darkness to steaming orange as Keahi’s body lit up like a firework. His human skin exploded into a million sparks, a chrysalis reduced to embers, and a seraph-like creature emerged, its six molten wings arching vengefully toward the starless night.

“Enough!” he roared with the volume an erupting geyser. “I’ve humored you enough! I’ve been patient. I’ve indulged your doubts and accounted for your mortal upbringing. I understood your sight was limited and took the time to broaden it so you could see the greater design. I wounded my sister in my endeavors to enlighten you, and it may well be a century before she deigns to speak to me again. So, you don’t just get to walk away.”

Slowly, as Keren stood, blue frost appeared in creeping crystal, spreading out from her feet, across the pavement, and up the legs of the bench. Ice both trailed after her and led the way, glazing the ground before her in a glinting spider web pattern. When its threads neared his heat, they instantly vaporized to steam, and a thick fog began to cloud the space between them. 

“Let us be clear,” she sneered. “I don’t owe you a damn thing. I don’t owe anyone anything. I didn’t belong to my so-called father, and I sure as hell don’t belong to you. I am my own. If I want to go, I will go. I don’t need your permission or blessing or indulgence. Your sister tried to explain that to you. You should have done it her way. You should have chosen to _wither_.”

“You were listening,” Keahi realized aloud, his eyes narrowing.

“I was leaving,” she corrected, “and I happened to overhear, but how lucky for me that I did. It cleared quite a few things up. See, I knew you weren’t exactly motivated by charity, but I admit—I had greatly underestimated just how selfish your motives were. I applaud you, really. It was a pretty scheme and expertly executed, every piece moving just the way you prodded it to. But I am not a piece or pawn or puppet. I am fine on my own, and as I have told you repeatedly already, I know how to save myself. So go back to your glorious paradise. I wasn’t built for heaven, and I wasn’t built for you.”

The fog was near impenetrable, and Keren could no longer see Keahi’s face, only the glow of sulfuric violet blue. But his voice cut through as clearly as rumbling magma reaching a fever pitch.

“You really are without a touch of pity.”

An arrow of tangerine flames shot straight for her, slicing the mist to wispy shreds. Keren didn’t flinch—the fire came rushing too ravenously, a burning avalanche bearing down. So she stood her ground and threw up a palm, and the air obeyed, coiling and hardening but not solidifying, almost liquid-like. The water-air curved into a half-moon, like the scoop of a lacrosse stick, and it caught the fire, which pooled and cooled in the cradle, going from livid flame to stone cold ice. Keren’s eyes widened, and the water-air vanished as her extended arm fell limply to her side. Without the elemental glove, the frozen flames crashed to the cement and shattered like a full-length mirror. The fragments encircled Keren’s feet, and in them she glimpsed her own eye, an iris of glacier blue against a backdrop of black.

Startled, she took half a step backward.

“Do not be afraid, beloved Adair.”

Keren’s head jerked up, but Keahi was gone, the sole evidence of his presence the scorched earth where he had stood.

“Who’s there?” she shouted, reaching back for her blade. “Show yourself!”

“Calm yourself, Adair. I mean you no harm.”

The voice, high and smooth like the wail of flute, was coming from above., and Keren’s gaze flew to the streetlight’s curving neck. There, sitting neatly at the curve’s maximum point, was a large, oily obsidian crow. Its eyes too were ebony, pupil and iris indistinguishable, yet Keren could see their intense intelligence. Their relentless focus on her.

“You are mistaken,” she said slowly, her hand still poised to grab the hilt of her sword. “My name is not Adair.”

“‘Adair’ is not a name, Keren,” the bird replied. “It is a title.”

“A title for what? And what are you? A fey?”

“‘Adair’ is the title of the heir to nowhere and everywhere.” Snorting, Keren lowered her hand.

“Definitely fey,” she grunted dismissively. “Go away. I don’t have time to play games or pick apart riddles.”

“Pray, Adair, do not accuse me of being one of those treacherous creatures, those butchers who killed your great mother.”

“My mother died in childbirth,” Keren refuted. 

“Your mother died at the hands of the fallacious fey!” the crow insisted, its spider-black feathers ruffling. “They cursed and killed her to steal her kingdom. But she will have the last laugh. They thought they slew her without an heir, but they should have known better than to test the queen of the in-between, she who is not bound by reason, rhyme, or time. There is an Adair, heir to the Morrigan, and Avalon will rise again.”

Before Keren could speak, the crow spread its inky wings and swooped into the shadows, its outline shifting shape in its descent, and when it landed before her, it was not as a bird, but a woman, young in appearance, small and thin framed. Her eyes were no longer greasy onyx.

They were the bright baby blue of Mara Fenslage.


	31. Epilogue

“I am so blessed to be leaving today,” Noelle squeaked, her mahogany brown cheeks taking on greenish tint as she took her seat at the dining room table. “I just saw Samir leaving Jang-mi’s room. The implication alone is just…just..,oh, I think I’m going to be sick.” A delighted grin breaking out across her ivory face, Sage arched an eyebrow suggestively.

“Well, good for Jang-mi,” she praised over a mug of coffee. “Who know that a little revenge would help her come out of her shell so splendidly?”

“You call her rolling in the hay with genie boy ‘splendid’?” Brielle huffed disgustedly. “I call it a threat to my already endangered sleep. It’s bad enough having one couple in the house that’s constantly making the beast with two backs at all hours of the day—” She glared at the end of the table where Felix was spooning a generous helping of fruit salad onto Danny’s plate. Neither bothered to return her stare, but Felix smirked broadly.

“—a second one will undoubtedly lead to sleep deprivation,” she finished. “At least Simon’s room is far away from the rest of us. We won’t have to worry about ever finding out his sex sounds are—if he ever locates his balls and finally mans up, that is.”

“I’m right here,” Simon groaned from across the table. He set down his glass of O neg and crossed his arms. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means if you don’t hurry up and make a move on Leilani,” Danny clarified, “someone else will. I’m blinder than a bat, but even I could see how starstruck the shadowhunter was over her.”

“Not to mention the new High Warlock, Rey,” Felix chimed in. “I hear he’s been making inquiries about her. He’s even trying to make nice with Bane, which is hilarious—their enmity for one another is infamous. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes an appearance soon at Shangri-La. “

Silently, Simon lifted his glass again and took a long, contemplative sip. Lorenzo Rey was of little concern to him. He knew Leilani thought the warlock pretentious, though her politeness would never permit her to say it out aloud, and if Rey was no friend of Magnus, then Leilani was unlikely to regard him with any more than cool civility.

Kosuke Tokugawa on the other hand…

Despite it being a week since the maithuna, Simon remembered with painful vividness how comfortably the shadowhunter’s hands had rested on Leilani’s waist. He had handled her with more familiarity and ease than a stranger should. It hadn’t been the first time, either, that he had been free with his touch, and both times Leilani had born it with a placid expression, unbothered and amenable. Did that mean she was drawn to him just as he was so clearly drawn to her?

Simon noticed his grip on his glass tightening exponentially, so he hastily released it, but his falcon sight could clearly see the miniscule cracks creeping up from the base to the sides.

“Are we expecting a guest?” 

Leilani’s voice was as soft as petals rustling in a breeze as she stepped into the dining room. She was wearing a tunic dress, maple red-orange in color, over a pair of russet tights, and her braid was plaited through with yellow mums brighter than any jewel. She was autumn in all its bounteous beauty.

“I don’t believe so,” Felix replied as Simon did his best to shake off his awestruck stupor. “Why?”

“There is an extra seat,” Leilani pointed out. She gestured at a chair two down from Simon, and a quick mental count around the table confirmed her observation—there were thirteen chairs, not twelve, the thirteenth having been squeezed in on Simon’s side of table to the right of the end closest to the doorway.

“S-sophelia s-said s-someone i-s coming to s-stay,” Eshana announced, slithering through the kitchen swing door, a serving tray of cinnamon-sweet apple turnovers in her hands.

“Excuse me?” Brielle growled. “I thought we agreed no more strays. The vamp was all fine and well—”

“Still here,” Simon cut in lowly.

“—but he’s the exception,” Brielle continued, “not the rule. If one of you brought home a stray puppy, do not expect me to play nice in the sandbox.”

“Come now, Brielle,” Mr. O’Keefe chortled. Shuffling in, he rounded the table and pulled out the chair beside Simon for Leilani, who smiled thankfully as she sat. Damn it, why didn’t Simon think of that? “We were all strays once. Isn’t that what this house is for? A home for wonderfully strange strays?”

He looked deliberately back at the doorway, and Sophelia skipped in, followed by her bouncing pigtails and a girl who she was leading by the hand. The newcomer was bronzed skin and skinny, her limbs slightly knobby at the knees and elbows, and her Frida Kahlo t-shirt was threatening to swallow her whole. Nervously, she moved strands of her hair, a longish bob streaked with turquoise, away from her cat-eyed glasses. Behind the lenses, her light brown eyes were as wide as teacup saucers. 

Cautiously, Sage rose from her seat.

“Ruth?” Brielle’s head snapped around.

“Ruth?” she repeated. “As in Ruth the reason you wouldn’t let Simon pound Begay into the dirt?”

“Y-you must be Brielle,” the girl piped up, chuckling anxiously. “My brother mentioned you’d be the one with the antlers and the…straightforward personality.”

“You didn’t mention Begay’s sister is sighted,” Felix drawled appraisingly. He pushed his spectacles up the incline of his nose, and Sage’s eyes flashed a warning emerald.

“Don’t, Felix!” she snapped. She then turned back to Ruth Begay and frowned. “What are you doing here?”

Ruth’s face slowly deflated, and she swallowed.

“Joshua,” she began quietly. “He’s missing. You see, up until a week, I was dying. Like, unconscious and on a ventilator dying. But I could still dream, and Joshua came to me in one…the last one. He said…he promised I’d live—that he had fixed what was wrong with me. But he also said he had failed to fix some other terrible mistake. He had set something free—something that knows no walls and will bring misery to all. He told me to the find the place where the impossible live and to tell you that he’s sorry…that he’s sorry, but he needs your help one more time.”

_To Be Continued_


End file.
